tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-80783795120955049462016-12-09T07:11:42.169-08:00Had Enough Therapy?Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.comBlogger4924125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-89694345188630274592016-12-09T07:11:00.001-08:002016-12-09T07:11:42.183-08:00Marxist Fairy Tales from the Frankfurt School<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">American liberals and progressives used to consider themselves the voice of reason. Not any more. If eminent New Yorker music critic <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-frankfurt-school-knew-trump-was-coming">Alex Ross</a>is any indication they have now descended into emotionally overwrought ranting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With the election of Donald Trump to the American presidency, they have been running around like modern-day Paul Reveres. Their message:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Nazis are coming! The Nazis are coming!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Their reasoning is so lame that one suspects that they are trying to undo the Enlightenment. Were they thinking clearly they would know that if they want to fight the good fight against sexist, homophobic anti-Semites, there is no shortage of Shariah-loving Muslim terrorists. But, that would require some courage. And, on the left, courage seems to be in short supply.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">They prefer to fight the good fight against what they see as an incipient Nazi movement. I will offer one piece of advice. No one is going to think you are very bright or very serious or very courageous if you persist in fighting the last war. Or better, if you are fighting phantoms while the real enemy is advancing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">According to Alex Ross, the ascendance of the authoritarian proto-fascist Donald Trump was foretold by the great prophets of what is called the Frankfurt School. This School was comprised by Marxist German philosophers who emigrated to the United States during World War II, only to discover that an incipient Nazism was about to descend on the land of the free and the home of the brave. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since they believed that Nazism was on the rise in America during the 1950s, their prophetic powers left a great deal to be desired. One also notes that they were spinning out Marxist fairy tales, and thus, that their judgment of political economy was lame and dangerous.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pretending to be a deep thinker Ross has trotted out the Frankfurt School in order to rehabilitate their tattered reputation. Apparently, if your wide-eyed prophecies come true at some point in the future you are automatically a great thinker and a great theorist. The fact that these philosophers were so consistently wrong makes no difference. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Because… what the world needs now is more Marxism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Allow Ross to describe his Frankfurt masters:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mann was hardly the only Central European émigré who experienced uneasy feelings of déjà vu in the fearful years after the end of the Second World War. Members of the intellectual enclave known as the Frankfurt School—originally based at the Institute for Social Research, in Frankfurt—felt a similar alarm. In 1950, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno helped to assemble a volume titled “<a href="http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=6490" target="_blank">The Authoritarian Personality</a>,” which constructed a psychological and sociological profile of the “potentially fascistic&nbsp;individual.” The work was based on interviews with American subjects, and the steady accumulation of racist, antidemocratic, paranoid, and irrational sentiments in the case studies gave the German-speakers pause. Likewise, Leo Lowenthal and Norbert Guterman’s 1949 book, “<a href="http://www.ajcarchives.org/main.php?GroupingId=6530" target="_blank">Prophets of Deceit,</a>” studied the Father Coughlin type of rabble-rouser, contemplating the “possibility that a situation will arise in which large numbers of people would be susceptible to his psychological manipulation.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One might argue that these German refugees, having lived through the rise of Nazism in their home country, wanted to warn their adopted nation of the dangers they saw. It would have been a nice way to return a favor. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, people who have been traumatized tend to see dangers even where there are none. When you have been traumatized your mind goes into trauma-avoidance mode and you select out any signs you associate with the trauma, then to magnify their importance. They might not signal a clear and present danger, but what harm is there in taking precautions. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Or else you could say that they were suffering from cognitive dissonance. They must have been happy to see that the armies of the Anglosphere defeated Nazism, but they could not accept the influence of a culture that was alien to their own. British empiricism and American pragmatism cannot coexist with continental idealism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ross continues:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Adorno believed that the greatest danger to American democracy lay in the mass-culture apparatus of film, radio, and television. Indeed, in his view, this apparatus operates in dictatorial fashion even when no dictatorship is in place: it enforces conformity, quiets dissent, mutes thought. Nazi Germany was merely the most extreme case of a late-capitalist condition in which people surrender real intellectual freedom in favor of a sham paradise of personal liberation and comfort. Watching wartime newsreels, Adorno concluded that the “culture industry,” as he and Horkheimer called it, was replicating fascist methods of mass hypnosis.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, this is absurd. I am not going to attribute it to Ross, since he is merely a carrier for Frankfurt School nonsense. What does it means to say that Nazi Germany was “the most extreme case of a late-capitalist condition.” You see, the Nazis were tricking you when they called their movement National Socialism. And they were even ore deceptive when they used its full title: National Socialist German Workers Party.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Does that sound like capitalism to you?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And, let’s not overlook the fact that German Nazis did not just hate the Jews. (One notes that Jewish bankers were instrumental in facilitating economic growth and development in Europe.) They hated Britain and America, as many continental Europeans do. Since Britain had invented free market capitalism, liberal democracy, human rights, the Common Law and so on, going to war, and being defeated by, nations that practiced true free enterprise does not make Nazi Germany the embodiment of late-capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One suspects that these Marxists were trying to recruit American graduate students to their cause, because no one is more gullible than an American graduate student who believes he is a serious thinker.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It takes minimum of thinking to see that Nazi Germany rejected both free markets and the free trade in ideas. It was obviously a cult to the will of a single individual, a Fuhrer. Rather than respect tradition, custom and convention and the rule of law, or the verdict of the marketplace, Nazis bowed down to the will of their Fuhrer.&nbsp; They preferred instinct to reason and sought to return to pre-Enlightenment days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Frankfurt School thinkers sided with Marxism because they, like many other Europeans, refused to accept that their wondrous Middle European culture had been defeated by the dread Anglosphere. After all, Nazism and fascism and Communism had arisen out of European idealism. This philosophical tradition was not congenial with the more pragmatic and empirical British and Americans. Idealism did not inspire an American constitution that valued the balance of powers and that severely limited the power of the executive.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, the Frankfurt School saw Marxism as the best way to be anti-Nazi and anti-fascist.&nbsp; It did not understand that Marxism had given rise to cults to the personality of people like Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Being an idealist means never allowing your theories to suffer the verdict of reality. Ross notes astutely that the alarms raised by Frankfurt School thinkers in the 1950s amounted to so much noise. After a time, he says: “… the Frankfurt School was seen in many quarters as an artifact of intellectual kitsch.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, the School has been having something of a comeback on American campuses. Apparently professors who are trying to figure out how to deal with the crisis in international capitalism have exhumed the Frankfurt School. They should have let it rest in peace. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The irony is inescapable. After Marxism failed miserably to fulfill any of its promises, serious pseudo-intellectuals are tormenting themselves about the crisis in capitalism. Might they not think about how they could have gotten it all so wrong? Marxist governments produced nothing more than depression, desolation, famine and death. And these serious thinkers are worried about capitalism. They sound like a bunch of sore losers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One suspects that the ability to blind oneself to reality is a sign of abiding faith in this pseudo-religion. These idealistic theories differ significantly from an Anglo-American culture based on empirical and pragmatic considerations. A culture that allows facts to decide the truth and that cares about whether a theory works in practice is not congenial to fascism.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, Marxists do not care about such banal considerations. They want to be considered to be above mundane considerations and to live among the philosopher kings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ross then excoriates the media for having given us Donald Trump. At the least, it shows that he has transcended banal facts. He does not give any weight to the fact that all of the mainstream media outlets, and nearly all newspapers detested Donald Trump. The New York Times considered the danger so great that it dispensed with the pretense of running objective journalism. Many other media outlets did exactly the same.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ross is undeterred by realities. He wants to blame it all on… you guessed it: Mark Zuckerberg. Because the trending stories on your Facebook page swung the election toward Donald Trump. You know which ones, the ones that consistently lean left. And one might add that the powers that be in Silicon Valley were big &nbsp;Clinton supporters. Google searches somehow tended to favor Hillary Clinton. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ross deals with these facts in his own special way. He proclaims that the media was suffering from an unconscious desire to elect Trump. Yes, you heard that right:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Traditional media outlets exhibited the same value-free mentality, pumping out Trump stories and airing his rallies because they got hits and high ratings. At some point over the summer, it struck me that the greater part of the media&nbsp;wanted&nbsp;Trump to be elected, consciously or unconsciously.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One hates to repeat oneself, but apparently one needs to do so. Authoritarian government is government by executive fiat, by executive edict or executive order. It is not a constitutional republic. Which president, we might ask ourselves, declared that he had to govern by executive order because Congress had failed to act? Where did he find that extra-constitutional principle?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And Ross, his mind having been seriously addled, declares that Trump will remove America from its role of world leader. Forget that fascist dictators always aspire to rule the world. Ross has another idea:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However the Trump Presidency turns out—whether it veers toward autocracy, devolves into kleptocracy, or takes some unheard-of new form—America has, for the time being, abdicated the role of the world’s moral leader, to the extent that it ever played that part convincingly. “Make America Great Again” is one of Trump’s many linguistic contortions: in fact, one of his core messages is that America should no longer bother with being great, that it should retreat from international commitments, that it should make itself small and mean.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You cannot help but laugh. Since Barack Obama has done everything in his power to diminish America’s role in the world, between walking away from Iraq, letting Syria burn, leading from behind in Libya and ceding authority to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, it’s a bit rich to complain that Trump will abdicate the role of the world’s moral leader.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To Ross, moral leadership means allowing more and more refugees into your nation. He sees the beleaguered German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, as the last, best hope for democracy. No kidding:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Germany, on the other hand, increasingly appears to be the strongest remaining bastion of liberal democracy.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As we know, liberal democracy was invented in that great bastion of capitalism: Great Britain. That nation just voted itself out of the European Union because British citizens were tired of taking their marching orders from unelected bureaucrats in Belgium and because they wanted to stop Merkel’s legions of Muslim refugees from arriving on their shores.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One thing that is clear: the refugees who are arriving by the hundreds of thousands in Merkel’s Germany are not coming for the liberal democracy. They have no interest in free markets or free speech. They want to impose their culture and their Shariah law on European infidels. In a growing number of cases the courts and the governments are more concerned with stifling what they have call hate speech than with stopping the refugee invasion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If this is Ross’s version of the last best hope for liberal democracy, he really should stay away from Frankfurt School philosophy. It has seriously messed up his mind.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-48263911920479556682016-12-08T06:50:00.002-08:002016-12-09T06:54:17.356-08:00Quotation of the Day<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif; line-height: 115%;">If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you do read it, you're misinformed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Denzel Washington</span><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span><br /><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">(via Mark Twain)</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-33636718084130993842016-12-08T05:22:00.000-08:002016-12-08T06:41:07.082-08:00We're Number 25!<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">It will not come as a surprise, but American children are still lagging the world in academic performance. When it comes to competing with their peers in foreign countries, they are not even close to the top. In most areas of academic achievement American children were average. In science we're number 25 in the world!</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">A recent test, called the 2015 Program for International Student Assessment was administered by Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Evidently, something is not quite right.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">According to <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2016-12-06/math-a-concern-for-us-teens-science-reading-flat-on-test">U. S. News and World Report</a>, the results showed:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Across the globe, American students were outperformed by their counterparts in 36 countries in math; 18 countries in science and 14 countries in reading.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The tests were given to children in Massachusetts, North Carolina and Puerto Rico. The results varied from state to state to territory:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico participated as international benchmarking systems and received separate scores from the United States. Massachusetts's average scores were higher than the U.S. and the international average scores in science, math and reading. North Carolina's average scores were not statistically different from the U.S. average scores for all three subjects. And Puerto Rico's average scores were lower than both the average U.S. scores and the international average scores for all three subjects.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">How do America’s best, from Massachusetts, compare to the best in the world. Singapore students’ science score led the world at: 556. Massachusetts students had 529, which would have tied them for sixth place. Singapore students math score was first at 540. Massachusetts students came in at 500.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Even America’s best, on a state level, do not do well in science and math. But, we really want to know what conclusions we should draw from this.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Naturally, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, believes that the problem can be solved by giving more money to teachers. One would like to know the difference between children who go to charter schools and children who attend schools where the teachers are unionized. One suspects that in many cases, in New York City at least, children in charter schools do better. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Strangely enough, none of those who have offered commentaries on the problem are suggesting that Common Core has helped things. As many have noted the Common Core curriculum, the brainchild of billionaires who have nothing better to do with their money, has not improved academic performance. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Common Core was concocted by so-called experts in the field of education. Evidently, the most recent election showed that a lot of Americans are seriously tired of having their lives run by so-called experts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Here is one suggestion, from the OECD, via <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/pisa-education-ranking-singapore/2016/12/07/id/762632/">Newsmax</a>:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">"The fact that students in most East Asian countries consistently believe that achievement is mainly a product of hard work, rather than inherited intelligence, suggests that education and its social context can make a difference in instilling values that foster success in education," said Andreas Schleicher, the OECD's director of education.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Ah, yes. Values? Hard work, discipline, focus and concentration. Doesn’t it sound a bit like the regimen favored by the Tiger Mom, and wildly rejected by American parents, educators and developmental psychologists? Or else, we can call it the Protestant Work Ethic. Which is not quite the same thing as an ethic that values fun and play. Or an ethic that seeks to stimulate creativity. Or an ethic that gives everyone a trophy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Evidently, the American fun ethic does not do as well as the old Protestant Work Ethic. And, dare we say, an ethic that values competition and that rewards success would be most likely to produce high student achievement.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">As for social context, one is obliged to note that stable families and stable home lives must count for something. A child who lives in chaotic family conditions will suffer from the instability and will be more likely to underachieve.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">We also note that inherited intelligence cannot lead to excellence without hard work. This is a version of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 rule. Many people have dismissed this rule, but if its purpose, as I see it, is to promote the value of hard work, focus, perseverance and concentration it is surely a step in the right direction. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/copying-singapores-math-homework-1481153530">Wendi Kopp</a>, founder of Teach for America and president of Teach for All offers another suggestion. She is too polite to suggest that Common Core, education by experts, has failed to improve students’ competitiveness, but she does recommend that we should learn from what other nations are doing well. Rather than turn to experts we can look at the way children are being educated in Singapore and Estonia and Japan.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">She explains:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Even though PISA shines a light on policies and practices driving high performance and meaningful progress, only sporadic, ad hoc and generally bilateral opportunities exist to carry knowledge of what’s proving successful in one country to other parts of the world. Most countries write off the opportunity to learn from the highest-performing countries, since they are far away and seem very different.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">And:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">An urgent need exists for structured channels and funding for sharing knowledge and innovation across borders—in other words, for a dynamic network of global organizations that makes it easier for countries to learn from each other.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">To be fair, these teaching methods are anything but state secrets. Everyone knows what everyone else is doing. Like a good bureaucrat, Kopp seems to believe that we just need more funding for a bigger bureaucracy. Then all will be well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The reasons for American mediocrity lie elsewhere. We know what other countries are doing. We know what they are doing in Singapore and South Korea. But we do not want to adopt their methods. Our developmental psychologists and other assorted experts have told us not to do so. They have told us that these methods will turn children into neurotic automatons. We have dutifully listened.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">We do not believe in competition. We do not believe in hard work. We do not teach perseverance. We want our children to be well-rounded. We want them to be popular. If they are teenagers we want them to have fulfilling sex lives and to be well informed about STDs and rape culture. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">We do not believe in stable homes where people live in harmony. We believe in individual self-actualization where parents believe that their first priority is to themselves. In many cases they believe that this must take precedence over their duties and obligations to their children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">It’s the values, or absence of same. If we want to make America great we would do well to reconsider the way we are bringing up and educating our children. And we might start out by revising our value system, by rejecting the values that have been imparted by the therapy culture.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[Addendum: See also <a href="http://www.weeklystandard.com/common-core-is-failing-high-schoolers-in-math/article/2005739">Alice Lloyd</a>, on the PISA tests and Common &nbsp;Core.]</span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-76179248878064037032016-12-07T06:51:00.000-08:002016-12-07T06:51:05.808-08:00Thank You, All<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My yearly pledge drive has ended and I want to thank all of you who donated to the blog. Your commitment is very much appreciated.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, for those who have not yet contributed, the Donate button on the left side of this page remains hot.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-62734216302286516902016-12-07T06:43:00.001-08:002016-12-07T06:43:42.464-08:00Off With Her Hair! <div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My, oh my—American women are suffering a major mental health crisis. At least, a significant number of female Washingtonians are taking Hillary’s election loss badly. Very badly, indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The great feminist heroine, the woman whose election would vindicate the political and ideological commitments of so many women, had been defeated by a misogynist boor. If they could not beat Donald Trump, what were they fighting for? They had gone all-in on Hillary, even though her successes, such as they were, derived more from her husband than from anything she had done.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Strangely, not one of the women who is flocking to the hair salon to make herself look less than her best has considered the possibility that Hillary lost the election by being less than a competent candidate and by being less than a successful public official.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">We will not say anything about Hillary’s looks, or about her constantly changing hair styles, but she was not the most feminine woman around. For many women she stood as the woman who had overcome the feminine mystique.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Was that the reason why so many women did not like Hillary? One would like to see an explanation for that. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Perhaps these women were living in a bubble where everyone has been cowed and bullied into believing one thing. They are convinced that they are right; they are persuaded that they are leading the world toward a brave new world; they know in their viscera that everyone in the country is on the same page. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then they are like the leader whose troops have deserted him, and who finds himself out exposed, and on his own. It's not a good feeling.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Are they more horrified at what happened or more horrified at having so completely misread the mood of the American people?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One hates to sound sexist here, but for many women it’s all about their hair.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/12/women-make-dramatic-beauty-moves-after-trumps-victory.html">New York Magazine</a> reports that hair salons in the D. C. area are seeing more and more women asking to have their hair cut off. These women are disowning their tresses, and lowering their pheromones because they have no other way to protest and to rebel against the horror that has just befallen them. (For the record, most of a woman’s sexual attraction hormones, her pheromones are in her hair. Take that as you wish.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Allow me to mention the obvious point: women in Washington are more likely to be working for the government or for a not-for-profit. They are less likely to be working in commerce, industry or manufacturing. One might say that the Obama years were golden years for them. And that, sexism notwithstanding, the Trump years might see government workers lose respect and prestige.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The women who are cutting their hair off are doing it for Hillary. Already, we have reason to question their judgment. And they are doing it to strike back against Trump. Yet, I don’t quite understand why harming your appearance is a blow against the patriarchy,. Then again, I did not take any classes in Women’s Studies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Heidi Mitchell has the story:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That sense of malaise is spreading across D.C. As women stare up at that glass ceiling still hanging over them and contend with a pussy-grabbing kleptocrat moving into the nearby White House, they are collectively — however subconsciously — making their own statements of rebellion by challenging traditional notions of beauty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Is it all be about shedding the trappings of femininity? Because that will teach those misogynist pigs a lesson. Then again, it might tell them to avoid your company:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“When you see that much blonde hair on the floor, you know something is going on,” says Nicole Butler, creative director and master colorist at Daniel’s Salon in Dupont Circle. During the notoriously slow month of November, her salon received a startling number of bookings, with at least three women a day sitting in her chair and asking for a drastic change, like cutting off six inches, going black, or going platinum.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Were these women declaring their independence? If so, independence from what: from curlers and blow dryers?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Usually stuff like this is planned for weeks and put on the books after several consultations, but this was very spontaneous,” Butler says. “It was like a mass declaration of independence.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Naturally, Mitchell has found an expert to explain it all. Marion Jacobs thinks it has something to do with control. In case you did not know, today’s therapists think that everything is a control issue. It’s their mental fetish <i>du jour</i>. I am sure you feel enlightened already.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mitchell reports:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Marion Jacobs, a former professor of psychology at UCLA and the author of&nbsp;Take-Charge Living: How to Recast Your Role in Life … One Scene at a Time, believes the phenomenon is a way for women in D.C. to feel powerful in a moment where a stranger has seized the steering wheel. “When people experience a change that is so opposite from their value system, that’s very unnerving,” says Dr. Jacobs, who has a private practice in Laguna Beach, California. “People will use all kinds of coping mechanisms, and cutting their hair and changing their look is one way to show or feel that they are doing something over which they have control.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Surely, these women are sympathizing with Hillary Clinton, the candidate whose slogan was: Stronger Together. Was it all a bluff? Did certain segments of the American populace, including no small number of women, call the feminist bluff? Then again, are these newly shorn women trying to tell us that being strong does not coincide with being feminine? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, wasn’t that the most obvious point about the Hillary candidacy?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Mitchell’s words: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“One of my clients said, ‘Think of Melania Trump and go in the opposite direction,’” she says. “She said, ‘I don’t want to be that person people see as sexual, I want to be seen as strong.’” Another professional woman cut her hair into a flattop. One client got rid of the blonde highlights she maintained forever, “because she said she never wants to be seen as cheap. I don’t know where that idea came from, but maybe that’s what she’s hearing.”&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some women thought that by cutting off their hair they were showing that they no longer wanted to fit in to society. As mentioned above, biology has it that long hair contains more pheromones, so it’s not all about conforming to societal norms:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">George Washington University teaching instructor Dr. Kristian Henderson had been battling with her hair for years, but after the election, she finally took off her weave and cut it all off. “The election results felt like an attack on minorities, women, and marginalized people in general. Having long hair was my attempt to fit into society, so after the election, I felt a need to exert my ‘uniqueness’ and not tie my femininity to the length of my hair,” she says.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To keep it fair and balanced, Mitchell notes that some women are keeping the look they had before the election. For Julianna Evans it was Goth. By her analysis, losing the election provoked the feeling a woman gets when her boyfriend dumps her and then moves in next door.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, these women felt rejected, as though by a boyfriend. And they wanted to punish these men by clipping off their own tresses? Huh?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Evans is continuing to fight the good fight to defeat misogyny. Besides, she loves her narrative and even if the world rejects it, she refuses to give it up. In it she’s a commanding general… so it doesn’t matter that she has no troops behind her:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Julianna Evans likes the narrative she’s commanding, and says she’s keeping her goth look, though her stylist has added some more natural lowlights. “You have to live here to understand that we are immersed in politics every day,” the mother of two explains. “For many of us, with this election, it’s like your boyfriend dumped you in a really shocking way with no explanation and then moved in next door.” She is resigned to fighting against what she sees as a mandate for sexism through her own style choices. “Now, I feel like my hair says you can’t bring me down. This misogyny will not persevere. The bumper sticker for me is, ‘I am woman, hear me roar.’”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is more than passing strange. It becomes even stranger when you try to put it all into something of a historical context. We know that some nuns do have their hair cut short. Presumably, their vocation and their membership in the sisterhood are not consonant with seeking to attract male erotic attention.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And then there is this. In France during and after the Nazi occupation women who were accused of collaborating with Nazis, of having sex with their captors, were humiliated by having their hair cut off, that is, by having their heads shaved.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The information comes from a site called <a href="http://rarehistoricalphotos.com/french-female-collaborator-punished-head-shaved-publicly-mark-1944/">Real Historical Photos</a>:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">French women who befriended the Nazis, through coerced, forced, or voluntary relationships, were singled out for shameful retribution following the liberation of France. The woman photographed here, believed to have been a prostitute who serviced German occupiers, is having her head shaved by French civilians to publicly mark her. This picture was taken in Montelimar, France, August 29, 1944.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">At the end of World War II, many French people accused of collaboration with Germany endured a particularly humiliating act of revenge: their heads were shaved in public. Nearly all those punished were women. Most historians have stressed the sexual anxiety created by the Nazi Occupation and how women’s sexual activity was judged as part of a public “cleansing” after liberation. Similar to the vigilante gangs that punished men who collaborated with the occupiers, groups would band together to judge women by parading them in the public square. This episode in French history continues to provoke shame and unease and as a result has never been subject of a thorough examination.</span></span></i></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-27447039527203258482016-12-06T08:01:00.000-08:002016-12-06T08:01:01.039-08:00Did the System Work?<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What went wrong? As Western nations are rejecting what seem to be liberal democratic institutions in favor of populism, more than a few people are asking what went wrong?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, the analysis assumes that the peasants with pitchforks are rebelling against democracies. It might well be, as <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-system-didnt-work-1480982735">Bret Stephens</a> suggests this morning, that they are rebelling against the elites who have been running the international banking systems. That is, against those who supposedly saved us from disaster after 2008. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">According to Stephens, the system did not work.&nbsp; In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis institutions of “economic global governance” took over from the markets. They narcotized the problem… disguising, but not solving it. It’s like maxing out your credit card and then taking out a few more credit cards to pay off the first one. Ad infinitum.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Would the market have done better? We do not know. Many serious thinkers—James Grant comes to mind—suggested that we would have done better to let the market deal with the problem. It would have produced some considerable short term pain, but it would have set the world banking system on firmer ground.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Populism, by Stephens’ reading, is a reaction to rule by certain elites, by a guardian class that believes it knows better than the markets. The economic recovery engineered by the guardians looks good on paper but does not feel so good for those who have been left behind. One understands that the profligate Obama administration could not have borrowed all the money it did if the Federal Reserve and other banking institutions did not conspire to keep interest rates artificially low.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Stephens’ words:<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What happened? In 2014,&nbsp;Daniel Drezner,&nbsp;a professor at Tufts, published a book extolling the International Monetary Fund and other institutions of “economic global governance” for putting out the fires of the 2008 financial crisis. The global economy had been teetering on the brink of another Great Depression, but it didn’t fall in. Ergo, success.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The book was called “The System Worked.” Except it didn’t.&nbsp; The system did more to mask problems than it did to solve them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Government statistics can show a drop in the unemployment rate, but they give scant indication of whether the jobs available now have the status or pay of the jobs available previously. Giving unlimited credit to a panicked patient will always have a narcotic effect; it can also have an addictive one. Near-zero (or sub-zero) interest rates will goose stock markets to the delight of sophisticated investors—and the dismay of savers. Bank bailouts may make “systemic” sense. But they divorce behavior from consequence. Pushing economic management from elected officials into the hands of unelected central bankers and regulators flatters the vanity of the intelligentsia while offending the normal person’s sense that his vote should count toward his own livelihood.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What does Stephens mean when he suggests that the bankers helped divorce behavior from consequence? I understand him to be saying that when you borrow too much you ought to suffer the consequences. Profligacy should not be rewarded. Yet, the guardian class printed so much money that people got the sense that they could spend what they wanted and that the day of reckoning could be put off forever. In their hearts they know that something was wrong. But they do not know what and do not know how to fix it.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-889410061054236622016-12-06T06:41:00.000-08:002016-12-06T06:41:53.185-08:00The Case for the Electoral College<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You would expect that a Harvard Law School professor would be the voice of reason and sanity. But, we live in difficult times, and, in a recent Washington Post op-ed Prof. Lawrence Lessig showed himself to be so totally overwrought about the election outcome that he recommended that electors defy their oath in the electoral college and vote how they pleased. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He counts among those who want to change the rules after the game is over. It’s a genuinely bad idea.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In brief, Lessig suggested that designated electors vote their conscience and not their commitments. By his idealized version of democracy—and it is not just his—the will of the majority of the people should prevail over the American constitution.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He is not alone in offering this viewpoint. And yet, if he takes it as seriously as he says, then he should be demanding that we scrap that other decidedly undemocratic institution: the United States Senate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In any event, Lessig has just been schooled by The Economist, in its <a href="http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2016/11/hillary-or-bust?spc=scode&amp;spv=xm&amp;ah=9d7f7ab945510a56fa6d37c30b6f1709">Democracy in America </a>column. It is rare that a magazine takes on and brings down a Harvard professor, but the magazine did just that. As happens with most articles in that magazine, it is not signed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The magazine accuses Lessig of “motivated reasoning.” By that theory people are often inclined to select out data that confirms their beliefs, ignoring facts that would tend to disprove them. Amusingly, for me at least, the notion of motivated reason, coupled with confirmation bias gives the lie to Freud’s claims that his patients provided material that proved the correctness of his interpretations. Suffering from motivated reason his patients were, in fact, conjuring up material that would prove him to be right. At times, of course, they did not believe it themselves. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anyway, the Economist summarizes Lessig’s argument.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Point one:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First, he says, there is no rule in the constitution compelling electors to vote for the candidate who received the most votes in their respective states. In fact, nothing in the document suggests “that electors’ freedom should be constrained in any way”. True enough.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Point two:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mr Lessig summons Alexander Hamilton’s argument in&nbsp;Federalist&nbsp;#68 that electors should vote based on “a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice”. Electors are, to Mr Lessig’s mind, a “safety valve” in case Americans screw things up a bit too royally: “Like a judge reviewing a jury verdict where the people voted, the electoral college was intended to confirm—or not—the people’s choice”.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Economist says that Lessig has indulged a bit of sophistry, via a specious analogy:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Judges do not appear out of nowhere to put the brakes on jurors’ democratic sentiment: they are carefully chosen, or they are supposed to be, for their intellect, expertise and fair-mindedness. Electors&nbsp;are tapped on the basis of their loyalty to a political party—not because they are wiser or more reflective than anybody else.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lessig has misunderstood the electoral college. It is not a deliberative body populated by solons. It is populated by “faceless hacks.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The Economist continues:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The electoral college isn’t a deliberative body at all: there is no discussion, just a secret-ballot vote. And each state’s electors vote in separate locations, never seeing each other or exchanging a word before doing their one-off constitutional duty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even if the 538 electors were somehow men and women of profound virtue and valour, blessed with a deep understanding of what America needs in a president, it would still be antithetical to democratic principles to untether their vote from the results of the actual vote on election day. But at least&nbsp;that&nbsp;looks like an enlightened aristocracy. How much more dangerous would it be to entrust the choice of the person to run the country to a few handfuls of ordinary people who have no particular clue?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lessig believes that electors know better than the voters of their states. The Economist&nbsp;calls him out on yet another piece of sophistry:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Under what theory would a smattering of several hundred unvetted party loyalists have a better radar for brainwashed or criminal candidates than upwards of a hundred million voters?&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And also:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If anything, entrusting the choice of the president to a group that’s 0.0005% the size of the voting population would make it more likely, not less, that a nightmare candidate would win the keys to the White House. Mr Lessig would like the electoral college to be “reflective” and “conservative”, and assert itself only for “a very good reason”, but it's hard to square this charming image of an obedient collection of right-thinking adults with Mr Lessig's point that no constitutional constraint binds them. Without an overlord telling them when to rebel and when to go with the flow—or, perhaps, an Ivy League professor whispering in their ears—the electors seem singularly incapable of saving the nation from a loon, a fascist or an inveterate Twitter abuser.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, Lessig trots out the argument that electors should vote for Hillary Clinton because she won the most popular votes. And yet, electors are not bound by the national vote tally. They are obliged only to vote for the candidate who won the majority of votes in their respective states. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then, Lessig adds the patent absurdity that Hillary was “the most qualified candidate for president in more than a generation.” In fact, she lost the election because the American public saw her to be an incompetent fraud.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Besides, the Economist continues, the democracy cannot function unless people play by the rules. The system, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once opined, is about playing by the rules, not necessarily obtaining justice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those who refuse to accept the outcomes are acting like pre-schoolers. The Economist explains:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Playing by the rules should result in the spoils that rule-following doles out to all involved parties. To tweak an admonition often directed to pre-schoolers, you get what you get, and whether or not you get what you want, you don’t get to upset the structure under which everyone was operating in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hail Mary attempts to thwart a Trump presidency—whether it’s throwing good money after bad in expensive recounts that have no real chance of changing the outcome or reimagining the nature of an old and weird institution with roots in the protection of slave states—are understandable. But they are desperate, and the latter is dangerous. Electors are better off doing what they were haphazardly appointed to do under America’s unique and all-too-flawed electoral set-up: represent the vote totals of their home states.</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Desperate people say desperate things. When serious law professors let themselves be carried away on a wave of emotion, what hope is there for the rest of us</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 115%;">?</span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-17870084985150539392016-12-06T05:35:00.000-08:002016-12-06T05:35:46.096-08:00An Orgy of Double Standards<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Get ready for an orgy of double standards. The media and many on the left have declared war on Donald Trump. It isn’t as though Trump did not bait them. He did. It isn’t as though Trump did not behave indecorously during the presidential campaign. He did. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet now, as president elect he has not been indulging in some of the rhetorical excesses he used during the campaign. Besides, in a nod to decorum he always wears a suit and tie. In a time of increasingly casual and slovenly male dress, Trump has returned to the uniform. One understands why some people would be horrified.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While the mainstream media was willing to excuse Barack Obama for everything he did, it is in full attack mode with Trump. To be more precise, the press declared everything Obama did to be genius. It seems to believe that everything Trump does signals incompetence and an absence of qualification. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Have you noticed that no one questioned the absurdly thin resume of Barack Obama? Some of us have questioned the Trump qualifications, but how many people pointed out that Obama had no qualifications to speak of? He had a few years as a backbench U. S. senator who accomplished nothing. Trump has no experience in government but he has worked as an executive and has dealt with foreign countries for decades.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Trump’s antics managed to make Obama look presidential, but Obama’s resume makes Trump look qualified.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While some media voices confessed after the election that they had missed the story and had left their readers in ignorance, they did not take the lesson to heart. They are back to trashing Trump, and thus, in my view, misleading and misinforming their readers. Moreover, they are compromising he mental health and emotional stability of their readers by feeding them scare stories and undermining their ability to think rationally about what is going on. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, Donald Trump just took a congratulatory telephone call from the president of Taiwan. The powers-that-be in Beijing did not look too kindly on the gesture, because they had reached an agreement with previous administrations that Taiwan was a rogue province of China and not an independent nation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The press was aghast. They should not be so quick to judge. Trump may have been flying blind. He may have been making a shrewd move in the game of three dimensional chess that is called foreign relations. I do not know. The press does not know, either. We will not know until we see how the relationship develops.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Media geniuses declared that they knew and that they understood. They saw Trump as a bumbler on the world stage. They were terrified to the depths of their being and managed to make their readers terrified too.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To place it all in context <a href="http://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2016/12/05/flashback-when-obama-communicated-directly-with-the-irananian-regime-n2255337">Katie Pavlich</a> recalls, for our edification, some of the telephone calls that Barack Obama made. For example, when Obama caved in to the leading state sponsor of terrorism the media was agog over his “brilliance.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pavlich writes:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-un-assembly-iran-idUSBRE98Q16S20130928">Back in 2013</a>&nbsp;President Obama made direct contact with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani with, you guessed it, a phone call. The call was initiated by President Obama, not Rouhani. Iran is listed as the world's largest state sponsor of terror by the State Department and before 9/11, its terrorism offshoot Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist organization in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And,<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Officials in the Iranian government have repeatedly violated international sanctions, classified the United States as Satan, called for the complete annihilation of Israel and is responsible for countless murders of U.S. troops in Iraq.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Reaching out to your enemy bespeaks an attitude of submission and surrender. Obama consistently adopted a respectful tone toward the ayatollahs. With his nuclear deal he basically gave them everything they wanted and got next to nothing in return. Upon signing the treaty he decided that it was not a treaty and did not need senate approval. He contravened the constitution and did as he pleased. The media declared it to be “historic.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, the Obama policy of kowtowing to America’s enemies did not stop with Iran. He did the same with Cuba.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Pavlich adds:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Earlier this year, Obama went to a baseball game in Cuba and did the wave with Dictator Raul Castro, brother of murderous tyrant Fidel Castro. Members of the Colombian terror group FARC were also in attendance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you were wondering why Trump supporters were angry, the reason must lie in the fact that for eight years America has been led by a man who ran around the world looking to surrender to people who hate America. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And the press cheered him on. Since the great Obama could do no wrong, Trump can do no right. Now you know why no one trusts the mainstream media any more.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-39827520289846899192016-12-05T06:02:00.002-08:002016-12-05T06:02:55.028-08:00Weakness in the Face of Terrorism<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">An Ohio State University student named Mackenzie was well placed to observe her campus’s response to the terrorist act committed by Abdul Razak Ali Artan. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She was also well placed to compare the reaction to terrorism with student and faculty reaction to the election of Donald Trump. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last week she called in to Sean Hannity’s radio program to explain what she saw. Her testimony is nothing less than breathtaking. The report comes from <a href="https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/12/03/ohio-state-student-after-attack-the-left-is-more-scared-of-trump-than-of-isis/?singlepage=true#">PJ Media </a>via <a href="http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/">Maggie’s Farm.</a><o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First, the campus reacted to Trump’s election with an outpouring of hysteria. Sad to say, no other word describes it as well. You would have thought that the world had come to an end and that the Nazis had just taken over America. One also notes that they don’t make professors like they used to. The dumbing down of American university faculties continues apace. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Mackenzie’s words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the election, my professors went crazy. I remember calling my mom and saying, 'You would think Hitler just got elected and massacred half the country.' It was ridiculous. Trump was called a Nazi, a rapist, a white supremacist, one of my professors actually said we should be terrified because Mike Pence believes women don't have the right to exist, or deserve to exist is actually what she said.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Under the aegis of their professors college students are not being taught to exercise their rational faculties. They are being taught to indulge in irrational and histrionic displays. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">Mackenzie continued:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">People were crying, my classes were canceled, massive protests on campus ... emails from professors about staying strong and how we are all going to lose our rights but it's going to be O.K. And it was crazy — I just couldn't believe it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When the terrorist attack occurred on the same campus, some classes were canceled for safety reasons. Some students held a candlelight vigil. And yet, the lesson that was imparted to students was: we must all become more sympathetic and compassionate toward Islam.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mackenzie explained:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">I've heard things about how we need to understand Islam, the vibrant Somali community we have here, how we need to embrace them even though this is the third attack by a Somali in the last year here in Columbus, and all this stuff about, you know, Muslim sensitivity</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That's all they care about. They are more scared of the right and Trump than they are of this terrorist attack that just happened on our campus. It's sickening to me because I feel like they are gambling with my life in order to reach this multiculturalism lie that they worship in all of my classes — and it's crazy.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What does this tell us? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For one, it tells us that terrorism works. Terrorists want to produce a specific effect. They want to intimidate the population while gaining respect for their cause. The Obama administration has done just what the terrorists want: it has refused to call Islamist terrorism by its name—lest people feel less respect for Islam—and it has gone on the attack against Islamophobia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The more people respond to Islamic terrorism by showing respect for Islam, the more terrorism we will see. The more Americans submit to Islam the more the terrorists believe that their strategy is working. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In another context it’s called appeasement. Obviously, it is cowardly. It has designated its enemies as those who would fight terrorism with force of arms. Obviously, George W. Bush is high on the list. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those who want to appease terrorists insist that the fault for 9/11 lies with the Bush administration. And yet, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attack saw things differently.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Writing in the Washington Post, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-horrifying-look-into-the-mind-of-911s-mastermind-in-his-own-words/2016/11/28/bf5827a8-b575-11e6-b8df-600bd9d38a02_story.html?postshare=361480384702368&amp;tid=ss_fb&amp;utm_term=.9de31118c746">Marc Thiessen</a>—a former Bush administration official—recounted the results of the enhanced interrogation of KSM. The interrogator, James Mitchell, has just written a book about it, so Thiessen is reporting the results from the book.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Thiessen’s words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For the pusillanimous left any military response is necessarily wrong. The left is, as the saying goes, “too proud to fight.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But note that the first evidence of American weakness was shown by… none other than Ronald Reagan. When the Marine barracks were bombed in Beirut in1983, killing nearly 300 marines, the Reagan administration did not respond vigorously. It did not hunt down the killers. It “turned tail and ran.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Denizens of the American right like to pin this all on liberal Democrats, but the first American president to show of weakness in the face of terror was Ronald Reagan.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next was Bill Clinton. Having seen the way a weak and decadent Clinton responded to terrorism, KSM planned his next attack, confident that a helpless America would not respond.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He was in for a surprise. Thiessen reports KSM’s words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Then he looked at me [Mitchell] and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The next time you ask yourself about what deters terrorism, you might consider KSM’s thoughts. Those who treat terrorism like a law enforcement matter invite terrorism. Apparently, the cowboy Bush’s response had a deterrent effect, even more than if he had called for an attack on Islamophobia.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">KSM’s purpose is to convert America to Islam, to see Shariah Law as the law of the American land. He cannot defeat America by force of arms but he can help America to defeat itself. America—and other European nations—invite terrorism by showing weakness and submission in the face of terrorism:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">But KSM said something else that was prophetic. In the end, he told Mitchell, “We will win because Americans don’t realize .</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">.</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">. we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">KSM explained that large-scale attacks such as 9/11 were “nice, but not necessary” and that a series of “low-tech attacks could bring down America the same way ‘enough disease-infected fleas can fell an elephant.’</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> </span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">”</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> KSM </span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">“</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">said jihadi-minded brothers would immigrate into the United States</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">”</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> and </span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">“</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">wrap themselves in America</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">’</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">s rights and laws</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">”</span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"> until they were strong enough to rise up and attack us. “He said the brothers would relentlessly continue their attacks and the American people would eventually become so tired, so frightened, and so weary of war that they would just want it to end.”<o:p></o:p></span></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Eventually,” KSM said, “America will expose her neck for us to slaughter.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Already American universities and the Democratic Party have succumbed. </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">It remains to be seen whether the rest of the nation follows.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">One notes that</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">&nbsp;Mackenzie could not divulge her last name. So much for free expression and the first amendment.</span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-75355561427032862102016-12-04T06:06:00.000-08:002016-12-04T06:06:18.904-08:00Advice for Overcoming Depression<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From time to time I offer up some comments on New York Magazine’s “<a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/ask-polly-i-moved-back-home-and-im-miserable.html">Ask Polly</a>” advice column.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As a rule I like advice columns. I second the opinion offered by a colleague some time ago, that therapists would do better to spend more time studying Miss Manners and less time with Freud and the Frankfort School.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Some advice givers are especially good, like Emily Yoffe when she was writing the Dear Prudence column for Slate and Kwame Anthony Appiah who writes The Ethicist column for the New York Times. Both Yoffe and Appiah are intelligent, thoughtful and adult.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, not all advice columnists are created equal. When Yoffe was replaced at Slate by someone named Marilyn Ortberg, the quality declined immediately. Ortberg is not a bad or unintelligent person, but she is simply too young for the job. I have long since ceased reading her columns.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But, a special award for bad advice must go to the Ask Polly writer for New York Magazine. I find this to be especially disappointing because the magazine often runs excellent stories about psycho science under its “Science of Us” rubric. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I don’t write about Polly very often because I would prefer not to beat up on people who are obviously defenseless. Today, however, I ran across a Polly column that makes some sense, and that spares us much of the maudlin sentimentality that makes most of the columns indigestible. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The letter writer, who calls herself “Sad and Probably Selfish” tells Polly that she is depressed. Underemployed and bereft in the big city she moved back in with her parents, only to find, as the old saying goes, that you can’t go home again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She expected that she would be warmly welcomed in the bosom of her family. She expected to find a loving Mom and Dad, happy to have her at home again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Apparently not. Her parents have been anything but welcoming. They have refused to play therapist to their whiny, self-absorbed daughter. This has evidently hurt her feelings. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">She wrote to Polly, apparently knowing that Polly is past master at dishing out emotional blather:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And most of all, my parents have made it clear that they are uninterested in and unable to deal with my sadness. My mother has suggested I am selfish for expecting her to take on my problems on top of her own and it would be better for everyone if I just sucked it up and never spoke about it like she’s always done.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I feel invisible. I want to wander the halls weeping and force them to look at me and listen to me and feel as helpless in the face of my sadness as I do. Probably this is selfish. I’m not a kid anymore, and my parents don’t have to subvert their lives and desires to mine. But I’m increasingly resentful and depressed by their unwillingness to acknowledge what I feel. The obvious solution is to move out, but I can’t afford to and have nowhere to go. But I don’t know how to balance the strong, silent insistence that I put on a brave face and my desire to just fall apart sometimes, and the fact that I came home because I thought it was where I’d be allowed to do so, and the knowledge that that’s so selfish and immature. How do I find some peace in this situation for as long as I’m powerless to change it?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You should read this over any time you are wondering why the millennial generation has garnered such a negative reputation. Her parents are telling her to suck it up and to be an adult. She believes that they should be like whiny therapists, providing emotional support, along with free room and board.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What does Polly have to say about all this? She opens by expressing sympathy with the young woman and suggests that her mother has a problem.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In her words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">This is a woman who can’t handle raw emotion from someone close to her. She wants to help, but she can’t, and she hates herself for it. She is defensive about her inability to help you, so she calls you names to make herself feel less guilty about it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Said mother might also feel guilty for having raised a parasite. Or better, she might not understand how the ambient culture has turned her wonderful daughter into a parasite.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is possible that the mother might reasonably be repulsed by the way her daughter is behaving. She might feel that allowing her daughter to indulge in a regressive return to her childhood state will not help her at all. And she might very well be right.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One suspects that Polly is blaming the mother because if she doesn’t the letter writer will not follow any of her advice.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Polly writes:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You want support, and you’re going to keep making your unhappiness more and more apparent to her, and she wants you to get tough and leave her out of it, so she’s going to keep saying hurtful things to push you away.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Polly’s solution: find a therapist. One suspects that some level of professional assistance will be useful, though Polly does not say which kind of therapist this woman should seek out. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The advice is sound, if only because it will cause this woman to stop trying to make her mother into a therapist. And hopefully it will stop her from thinking that the world and her parents exist to accommodate her emotional states. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, it would all be better if the woman got a job. Recall that Harvard psychiatrist Richard Mollica once said: “the best anti-depressant is a job.” One suspects that this woman will, if she consults with a therapist, be put on medication. She ought to get a job and to get to the gym. It is not as complicated as we think it is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Polly knows this and recommends it, but she knows that the woman had a job and friends and a gym membership before she moved back home. The woman wrote that she was underemployed. Apparently, the indignity of being a barista at Starbucks was too much to bear. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Undoubtedly, she is suffering from too much high self-esteem. She must have been told that she was terrific. And that, after graduating from college she would go out and change the world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then, when she encountered the real world she discovered that the world was not in on the joke. Rather than accept that she had been lied to, she moved back into her childhood bedroom… the better to regress.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The solution is simple: she like other underemployed millennials should learn how to do the best they can with the job they have.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Colin Powell once recounted that on his first job, garnered at age 19, he was sweeping the floors of a warehouse. He told himself that he would do the job better than anyone else had ever done it. And he did. One day, while he was industriously sweeping the floors, the manager walked by and saw him. The manager offered him a promotion, saying: why is that guy sweeping floors?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Understanding the way the world works—surely something that they do not teach in college these days—will serve this young woman in better stead than has all of the self-esteemist nonsense.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I would also like to know whether there was a boyfriend involved. Or whether there were a few too many hookups. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but while I agree with Polly that work and exercise and perhaps even therapy would be very helpful for this woman, the dog that didn’t bark—to take a line from Arthur Conan Doyle—is her relationship status, especially her past relationships status.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Any therapist who ignores this is a fool.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then, Polly offers some constructive advice. If the woman cannot get a job right away she should close the book on her parasitical existence by becoming a contributing member of the household.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Polly suggests:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To help you feel less guilty and selfish, I would put two helpful household tasks on your schedule every single day. For example: Do some laundry. Weed the garden. Load the dishwasher. Walk the dog. Wash the windows in the front of the house, inside and out. The harder the chores, the better. Do things your mom has been putting off. (Check with her first.) This will buy you a lot of goodwill, and it will make you feel less worthless.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In order to feel less worthless she should make a positive contribution to the home. Instead of whining about how her mother refuses to kowtow to her emotions she should offer more help around the house.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One understands that this will feel like housework. One understands that today’s young women believe that they are much too good to do housework. Nevertheless, Polly’s advice is germane and to the point.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-31496604497651723752016-12-03T11:42:00.003-08:002016-12-03T11:42:48.616-08:00Blog Appreciation Week<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Being as this is a conservative blog, I make a special effort to respect tradition. Even my own invented traditions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Long time readers know that I have taken Cyber Monday as the time to kick off my annual fundraising campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It might not seem like it, but it does take some considerable work to produce these posts every day. For those who are thinking about how they can express their appreciation for my efforts, I recommend making a donation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you click on the orange Donate button on the left side of this page, the kind folks at Paypal will help you to contribute as much as you would like.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you would rather not have to use Paypal, I gratefully accept checks sent to my address:&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 310 East 46<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;St. 24H<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; New York, NY&nbsp;&nbsp; 10017<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thank you in advance.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-59966469036389207352016-12-03T08:46:00.003-08:002016-12-03T08:46:44.851-08:00Is This the End of Liberal Democracy?<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One recalls—just barely-- the halcyon days when the Berlin Wall fell and when liberal democracy was busting out all over. Francis Fukuyama became famous for declaring that we had reached the end of history and that the Hegelian prophecy had been fulfilled.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For reasons that escape me many conservative thinkers embraced Fukuyama as one of their own. And yet, Hegel was anything but a conservative. He was a wide-eyed idealist who became the godfather of Marxism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fukuyama had allowed his mind to be occupied by one of Europe’s greatest idealists. Yet, he and his acolytes failed to understand that Hegel was anything but a proponent of free enterprise and liberal democracy. Hegel did not believe that human beings could, through the exercise of their free will, direct the course of history. His was an alternative to British empiricism and eventually American pragmatism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hegel believed that history embodied the movement of the World Spirit. &nbsp;Human beings could advance the historical narrative or resist it. They could catch the wave or fight it. There was no place for true freedom in Hegelianism. This never prevented Communist governments from calling themselves “democratic.” By that they meant that they were enacting what Rousseau called the “general will,” the true wishes of the populace, even if they had not been expressed in an election. If the people do not know what is good for them the Party does.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fukuyama simply misunderstood Hegel. In so doing, he resurrected the reputation of a thinker whose acolytes brought extraordinary destruction to the world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It was anything but conservative thinking.&nbsp; This shows a regrettable truth: conservative thinkers have ceded the philosophical high ground to the left. When they take a whiff of its thin air they become disoriented. It’s a conspicuous failure, one that should not be dismissed lightly.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If we wish to extricate ourselves from the Hegelian straitjacket we should note that the end of Communism did not produce a triumph of liberal democracy. It offered us two nations trying, each in its own way, to recover from Communism. Call it a clash of policies, a competition between different approaches to political and economic reform. Nothing about it was given in advance.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Russia Mikhail Gorbachev offered economic reforms, coupled with what he called “<i>glasnost</i>,” a Jeffersonian approach involving free elections, free speech, a free press and the other trappings of liberal democracy. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In China, which was in far worse shape than Russia, the transformation had begun ten years earlier, when Deng Xiaoping instituted economic reforms by privatizing communal property and opening the doors to free enterprise. The Chinese leader had no real use for liberal democracy, probably because he believed that it was a destabilizing force.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The protesters who occupied Tiananmen Square in 1989 discovered that Deng and his cohorts in the Politburo saw democracy as a threat to economic reform, not its handmaiden. China’s subsequent success has told many people that democracy was not a necessary accompaniment to free enterprise capitalism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Communism fell, China got to work and Russia got to bickering. After a time Russia decided that an authoritarian ruler would be more effective than a liberal democrat. With the advent of Vladimir Putin, it appears, at least for now, that Deng won the debate. The more they see Americans having a debate over transgendered restrooms, the more they are convinced that they made the right decision.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Today, countries that want to institute serious economic reforms are more likely to follow the Chinese than the Russian models. Worse yet, Western democracies with their hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing over everyone’s hurt feelings seem to many leaders to be weak and in decline. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, in the past, nations have underestimated the certain nations in the West. In particular, German militarists mistakenly imagined that the nation that gave us gentility and good manners would not have the guts to fight against an embodiment of macho strength. They learned, to their chagrin, that they had underestimated Anglo-American grit and strength. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Great Britain gave us the architect of appeasement, Neville Chamberlain, but it also gave us Winston Churchill. We note that the weak-kneed Obama administration removed a bust of Winston Churchill from the oval office. How better to choose personal pique over strength? How better to announce that one is going to follow a policy of appeasement?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, today’s European social democracies have been projecting weakness. As has the pusillanimous Obama administration. They seem to believe in the Hegelian prophecy, thus that they are on the right side of history and need not do anything in particular to prevail. By attacking all evidence of masculine and martial virtues they have systematically weakened Western culture, to the point where entire nations have opened their arms to marauding armies of Muslim refugees.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The issue was in play in the last presidential election. There, to the manifest chagrin of all those who embraced the gospel of weakness, the American people chose strength over weakness. Even though the Trump campaign manifested too much macho posturing, it succeeded in getting its message across. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">True enough, Trump kept suggesting that he wanted to become more isolationist and less internationalist. And yet, with the nomination of Gen. James Mattis to be Secretary of Defense Trump has shown that perhaps he did not really mean much of what he said about disengaging from the world. And he certainly showed that he wanted strength above all else. Strangely enough, the New York Times this morning suggested that a guy nicknamed “mad dog” would be a good influence on the Donald. Because Mattis was thoroughly familiar with geopolitics and the functioning of the military. Naturally, a senator named Kirsten Gillibrand said that she would oppose Mattis, on the grounds that he was military. Would she have said the same of George Marshall? Or was she just trying to manifest girl power?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The American people seemed to decide that candidates not named Trump were too weak and too sensitive to conduct the war against Islamic terrorism. President Obama was so afraid of it that he refused to pronounce its name. As for Hillary, she failed miserably in her Libyan incursion and she was surrounded by women. At times, her campaign looked like it was being run by a coven. She made “Stronger Together” her campaign slogan, but very few people really believed that it was more than posturing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a time of war, at a time when Western civilization is under attack, the American people opted for strength over weakness. And the American people, especially America’s young people, seem less concerned with the bickering that has come to define democratic deliberation and more concerned with a strong leader who can fight and win a war. They were less worried that George Bush was too strong than that he was not strong enough.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Fukuyama notwithstanding, liberal democracy is no longer the rage that it once was. Around the world young people say that they would prefer a military coup, thus a more authoritarian government.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The following account of a recent study comes to us from <a href="http://qz.com/848031/harvard-research-suggests-that-an-entire-global-generation-has-lost-faith-in-democracy/?utm_source=qzfb">Quartz</a>:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">People everywhere are down on democracy. Especially young people. In fact, so rampant is democratic indifference and disengagement among millennials that a shocking share of them are open to trying something new—like, say, government by military coup.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That’s according to research by Yascha Mounk, a Harvard University researcher, and Roberto Stefan Foa, a political scientist at the University of Melbourne. The remit of their study, which the&nbsp;Journal of Democracy will publish in January, analyzes historical data on attitudes toward government that spans various generations in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. They find that, across the board, citizens of stable liberal democracies have grown jaded about their government, say Mounk and Foa—and worse.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And that is not all. These young people are open to radical proposals to limit freedom of speech. This might mean that they have been brainwashed in authoritarian principles. But it might also mean that they are looking for a wartime leader and not for more girl power.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Quartz reports:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Young people today are more into political radicalism and exhibit less support for freedom of speech than previous generations, according to the July study.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The survey also tells us that young people are less interested in civil rights and do not much care about elections. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/article/442658/post-cold-war-foreign-policy-america-world-dominance-ending">Charles Krauthammer</a> made a similar point in a recent column:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That era is over. The autocracies are back and rising; democracy is on the defensive; the U.S. is in retreat. Look no further than Aleppo. A Western-backed resistance to a local tyrant — backed by a resurgent Russia, an expanding Iran, and an array of proxy Shiite militias — is on the brink of annihilation. Russia drops bombs; America issues statements. <o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What better symbol for the end of that heady liberal-democratic historical moment. The West is turning inward and going home, leaving the field to the rising authoritarians — Russia, China, and Iran. In France, the conservative party’s newly nominated presidential contender is fashionably conservative and populist and soft on Vladimir Putin. As are several of the newer Eastern Europe democracies — Hungary, Bulgaria, even Poland — themselves showing authoritarian tendencies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Discredit where discredit is due. Krauthammer believes the current feckless American administration has opened the way for an authoritarian resurgence:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And even as Europe tires of the sanctions imposed on Russia for its rape of Ukraine, President Obama’s much touted “isolation” of Russia has ignominiously dissolved, as our secretary of state repeatedly goes cap in hand to Russia to beg for mercy in Syria.<br /><br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">With China, Krauthammer sees the same tendency:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As for China, the other great challenger to the post–Cold War order, the administration’s “pivot” has turned into an abject failure. The Philippines has openly defected to the Chinese side. Malaysia then followed. And the rest of our Asian allies are beginning to hedge their bets. When the president of China addressed the Pacific Rim countries in Peru last month, he suggested that China was prepared to pick up the pieces of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now abandoned by both political parties in the United States.<br /><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, the post-Cold War period now seems to have been defined by the rise of Islamic terrorism. Faced with a significant threat, some Western nations have been trying to appease the holy warriors. Others are willing to fight.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The soft power of gynocentric European nations has led to a massive invasion and to increasing threats of terrorism. The authoritarian regimes in Russia and China have followed different policies and have tamped down on the jihadi tendencies of the Muslims within their borders. Vladimir Putin is not promoting a Merkelian open arms policy toward Muslim refugees. Xi Jinping has not concerned himself with the sensibilities of Chinese Muslims.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you are addressing an enemy that seeks to destroy your civilization by terrorizing your population and by raping your women, you might think that show of force is required. And you might believe that you must unify the nation behind its leaders. This would not make you an incipient fascist. It would show you to be a realist who has tasked himself with cleaning up the mess that weak-kneed social democrats have visited on their nations.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-50210321347596415172016-12-02T07:12:00.000-08:002016-12-02T07:12:43.989-08:00The Keith Ellison Perplex<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After eight years of systematically ignoring anti-Semitism Democrats went into high dudgeon over Steve Bannon’s work at Breitbart news. The media organization was founded by a Jew named Andrew Breitbart and the article that was supposedly the most offensive was authored by someone named David Horowitz. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The story was salient because it affirmed the left-wing suspicion that anti-Semitism and all other forms of bigotry came from the one true enemy: the right wing.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, the specter of anti-Semitism has come to haunt the Democratic Party itself. In the wake of its election debacle the party had seemed to be uniting around the candidacy of one Keith Mohammed Ellison for Chair of the Democratic National Committee.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Apparently, the lesson of election 2016 has been lost on Democratic operatives. As <a href="http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-defeat-of-diversity-politics.html">Mark Lilla wrote and as I commented on,</a> the biggest loser in the election was identity politics. Dividing the nation into warring factions did not work out as expected. Placing everyone in different groups based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and whatever felt like a systematic attack on white people, an attack that relied on slander and defamation. And, not just on white people. It all felt like an attack on national unity. In the election the nation rose up against the tyranny of political correctness. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, as Bob Dylan famously chanted: “When will they ever learn?” This week the night riders of the thought police have set out against a Texas couple named Chip and Joanna Gaines. The two have a television show on HG TV called Fixer Upper. They have parlayed their show into a budding media empire. No one who has watched the show has any but good feelings for the Gaineses. As it happens, they are a mixed race couple. Not that that matters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What was their thought crime? In truth, it wasn’t theirs. It was attributed to the pastor of the church they attend. According to Buzzfeed, among others, their pastor Jimmy Seibert holds politically incorrect, and therefore heretical views about marriage.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="https://thefederalist.com/2016/12/01/buzzfeed-wants-destroy-chip-joanna-gaines-christian-wildly-popular/">The Federalist</a> reports:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[According to] Jimmy Seibert, the Gaines’ pastor: “So if someone were to say, ‘Marriage is defined in a different way,’ let me just say: They are wrong. God defined marriage, not you and I. God defined masculine and feminine, male and female, not you and I.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You may, of course, want to debate the point. As it happens, until a couple of decades ago, no one doubted this notion. Now, it has been thrown into question. But, that is not all. It has been denounced as a thought crime, as an offense against the faith. Anyone who believes what every human society has believed and practiced until a couple of decades ago is a bigot and does not deserve to have a television show on HG TV.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In fact, it does not really matter what Chip and Joanna Gaines believe or disbelieve. Attending a church where the pastor holds heretical views is, in the minds of the politically correct zealots, disqualifying.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you were wondering why identity politics went down in flames on November 9, here’s one good reason. Then again, remember when Democrats and the political left happily excused a presidential candidate who attended a church led by a pastor who hated America, white people, Jews and Israel?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the meantime, the great minds of the Democratic Party, led by their congressional leaders have missed the point of the election. <a href="http://www.newsmax.com/AlanDershowitz/dnc-ellison-farrakhan-record/2016/12/01/id/761578/">Alan Dershowitz</a> excoriates them for not being too bright:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What should a political party that has just lost its white working-­class blue-collar base to a “make America great again” nationalist do to try to regain these voters? Why not appoint as the new head of the party a radical left-wing ideologue who has a long history of supporting an anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam racist?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Such an appointment will surely bring back rust belt voters who have lost their jobs to globalization and free trade! Is this really the thinking of those Democratic leaders who are pushing for Keith Ellison to head the Democratic National Committee?<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One hates to say it, but how can we ignore the fact that the current occupant of the White House himself had a long history of supporting an anti-American, anti-white, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam racist. Hmmm. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To be fair, Rev. Jeremiah Wright was not a Muslim and did not belong to the Nation of Islam. And yet, he worked closely with Louis Farrakhan, even to the point of participating in rallies with him. And, Rev. Wright, happily published Hamas propaganda in his Church bulletin.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Do Democrats see Keith Ellison as the new Barack Obama?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Neither Farrakhan nor Wright nor, for that matter, Ellison, could support a campaign to make American great. Even if they disagree over whether America ever was great—they do not—they can hardly be expected to support anyone’s craving for national unity. After all, Wright preached something that was called black liberation theology… a doctrine that defined blacks as an oppressed class that needed to rise up and overthrow their white oppressors. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Since Ellison had a long history of associating with Farrakhan, it is fair to point out that the Nation of Islam founder has not been very much of a patriot. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dershowitz made the case:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ellison’s sordid past associations with Louis Farrakhan — the longtime leader of the Nation of Islam — will hurt him in Middle America, which has little appetite for Farrakhan’s anti-American ravings. Recently, Farrakhan made headlines for visiting Iran on the 35th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution where he berated the U.S., while refusing to criticize Iran’s human rights violations.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Farrakhan also appeared as a special guest speaker of the Iranian president at a rally, which featured the unveiling of a float reenacting Iran’s detention of 10 U.S. Navy sailors in the Persian Gulf. (Jessica Chasmar, "Louis Farrakhan Speaking in Iran, Slams American ‘Dismal’ Human Rights Record," The Washington Times, Feb. 12, 2016.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition to embracing American enemies abroad, Farrakhan has exhibited a penchant for lacing his sermons with anti-Semitic hate speech. Around the time that Ellison was working with the Nation of Islam, for example, Farrakhan was&nbsp;<b><a href="http://archive.adl.org/special_reports/farrakhan_own_words2/on_jews.html">delivering speeches</a></b>&nbsp;attacking “the synagogue as Satan.” He described Jews as “wicked deceivers of the American people” that have “wrapped [their] tentacles around the U.S. government” and are “deceiving and sending this nation to hell.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those who care can also examine the record of Ellison’s anti-Israeli votes in Congress. The record is perfectly clear to anyone who cares to look at it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dershowitz outlines it:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ellison’s voting record also does not support his claim that he has become a “friend” of Israel. He was one of only eight congressmen who voted against funding the Iron Dome program, developed jointly by the U.S. and Israel, which helps protect Israeli civilians from Hamas rockets.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In 2009, Ellison was one of only two dozen congressmen to vote “present” rather than vote for a non-­binding resolution “recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself against attacks from, reaffirming the United States’ strong support for Israel, and supporting the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And&nbsp;<b><a href="http://forward.com/news/124917/congressional-letter-to-end-gaza-blockade-splits-a/">in 2010</a></b>, Ellison co-­authored a letter to President Obama, calling on him to pressure Israel into opening the border with Gaza. The letter describes the blockade of the Hamas controlled Gaza strip as “de facto collective punishment of the Palestinian residents.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, the powers-that-be in the Democratic Party, including New York’s own Jewish senator, Chuck Schumer have supported Ellison. When Ellison ran for Congress in Minnesota Jewish groups decided that he had had a change of heart. They supported him. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Barack Obama declared that his twenty year association with Rev. Wright did not matter, Jewish groups supported him. How did that work out? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Examine Obama’s contempt for the prime minister of Israel, his efforts to legitimize the Muslim Brotherhood and his efforts to empower the Iranian regime. Then you can ask precisely how much he had really put the Rev. Wright in the past. When Obama sent hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to Tehran, money that would be funneled to Hamas and Hezbollah, the better to support their efforts to kill Jews... who in the American Jewish community stood up against him?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If Obama’s record with Rev. Jeremiah Wright did not matter to the Democratic Party, why should Keith Ellison’s? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, the <a href="http://hotair.com/archives/2016/12/01/adl-says-keith-ellison-remarks-are-disqualifying/">Anti-Defamation League</a> has just discovered that Keith Ellison is too anti-Semitic. So perhaps his quest for legitimacy at the DNC is over? But, then again, why did it take this much time? And when will people understand that the issue is not Keith Ellison, but Barack Obama?</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-47547837315909474462016-12-01T07:02:00.001-08:002016-12-01T07:02:36.719-08:00Blog Appreciation Week<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Being as this is a conservative blog, I make a special effort to respect tradition. Even my own invented traditions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Long time readers know that I have taken Cyber Monday as the time to kick off my annual fundraising campaign. It will last for the week, so you might see this same post repeated as the week goes on. Brace yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It might not seem like it, but it does take some considerable work to produce these posts every day. For those who are thinking about how they can express their appreciation for my efforts, I recommend making a donation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you click on the orange Donate button on the left side of this page, the kind folks at Paypal will help you to contribute as much as you would like.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you would rather not have to use Paypal, I gratefully accept checks sent to my address:&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 310 East 46<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;St. 24H<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; New York, NY&nbsp;&nbsp; 10017<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thank you in advance.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-19418659793116385132016-12-01T06:58:00.000-08:002016-12-01T06:58:35.337-08:00Recruiting Terrorists<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It is fairly obvious that Ohio State terrorist Abdul Razak Ali Artan was taking a page out of the Palestinian playbook. The Palestinians invented and have perfected the practice of using automobiles as weapons against civilians and the police, coupled with knife attacks.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">B<a href="http://nypost.com/2016/11/29/the-ohio-state-attack-was-honed-by-palestinians/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&amp;utm_source=NYPTwitter&amp;utm_medium=SocialFlow">enny Avni</a> explains it and notes that that, since these attacks happen in Israel, no one really cares:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As it happens, ISIS recently called on its followers to kill pedestrians with cars and other vehicles. According to several reports, ISIS was inspired by the July 14 attack in Nice, where a semitrailer-driving Islamist rammed celebrants of France’s Bastille Day, killing 84.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And late last week ISIS posted to the Web video clips with instructions on the proper use of knives and other sharp objects to maximize harming infidels’ bodies. Another Palestinian calling card.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Welcome to Israel, the terror lab where the latest innovations are tried, practiced and (sometimes) perfected before being exported. According to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, since the height&nbsp;of the “car and knife intifada” in September 2015, Palestinians committed 167 stabbings, 116 shootings, 48 vehicular attacks and one vehicle bombing, killing 42 people and injuring 602.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yet, despite the frequency of attacks in the early days last year, and although a new form of terrorism was born, assaults at the heart of Israel’s cities rarely made it to speeches of world leaders tallying global terrorist incidents.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As might be expected, the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/28/us/active-shooter-ohio-state-university.html?_r=0">New York Times</a> conveniently forgot to mention that similar attacks have been a staple of Palestinian terrorists in Israel. It discussed attacks in France and Germany, without mentioning Israel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As always happens now, when Islamic terrorism occurs, the Muslim community expresses deep anguish… not so much about the victims, but about the reputation of Muslims. Above all else they do not want to see their own reputations suffer. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In truth, human beings cannot, as a matter of mental economy, simply take every Muslim terrorist or any criminal from any other identifiable ethnic group as an individual, disconnected from any groups. Reputation is not merely a personal matter. It is shared. If you tarnish your good name others who bear it will also lose face.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Those who try to control the reputational damage by calling people Islamophobes are perpetrating a lie. The same applies to those who refuse to say that the terrorism has anything to do with Islam.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After the attack, ISIS declared Artan to be a soldier fighting for their cause, which may or may not mean that his attack was coordinated. It may mean that he took inspiration from the terrorist group and wanted to strike a blow against white privilege.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, we want to know how Abdul Artan became radicalized. Rumblings suggest that he was influenced by Anwar al-Awlaki, who doubtless spoke to him from beyond the grave. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But Artan himself seemed to believe that he was pushed toward terrorism by Islamophobia. The Times story put that interpretation front and center:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Last summer the student newspaper, The Lantern, published&nbsp;<a href="http://thelantern.com/2016/11/from-the-archives-ohio-state-attacker-featured-in-humans-of-ohio-state/">an interview</a>&nbsp;with Mr. Artan in which he complained about being afraid to pray in public as a Muslim, because of people’s negative perceptions of the religion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media. I’m a Muslim, it’s not what media portrays me to be,” he told the newspaper. “If people look at me, a Muslim praying, I don’t know what they’re going to think, what’s going to happen. But I don’t blame them. It’s the media that put that picture in their heads.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Why do they hate us, the Times seems to be asking. Because we are not nice enough to them, it seems to be answering. By its lights, if only we rid out hearts and minds of prejudice, terrorism would vanish into the cold night air.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One understands that Artan was not the brightest of the bright. If he was concerned about the reputation of Muslims he might have understood that committing terrorist mayhem on the campus of Ohio State University would not contribute to the cause. Clearly, the good name of Islam was not very high on his list.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Artan seems rather to have taken a page out of the politically correct chapbook. He believes that people are prejudiced against Muslims becaue of… the media. He blames it, implicitly, on the Islamophobia that has been stirred by the media. By that one assumes that he, like our president, blames Fox News.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Apparently, Artan believed that the problem was Islamphobia, because he believed that media depictions of Muslims were giving members of his faith a bad reputation. He does not consider that the actions of Muslims themselves might have contributed to the bad reputation. Being an Islamist terrorist means never taking responsibility when other people think ill of you.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In truth, the mass media and the Obama administration have been fighting the good fight against Islamophobia for nearly eight years now. The media, such as it is, keeps telling people that Islamic terrorism is not the problem, but that Islamophobia is. After all, that is the thrust of the Times article.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">However much he was radicalized by al-Awlaki, Abdul Artan seems to have been consumed by the idea that he could, by committing a terrorist act, take revenge on those who looked down on his faith. He wanted to be respected. He wanted Islam to be respected. He wanted his culture to be seen as strong. He wanted it to appear to be superior. And the only way he knew now to do it was to kill people in its name.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Writing on Facebook Artan had declared that he was willing to kill a billion infidels. So much for the religion of peace. So much for Islamophobia. He was looking for converts.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He did not just have friends in the media. He did not know it but he also had sympathizers in the Ohio State University.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Stephanie Clemons Thompson, a diversity official at Ohio State University, &nbsp;wrote on Facebook that we should feel compassion for a troubled young man. And she included the hashtag, #BlackLivesMatter on her post. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><img alt="stephanie-clemons-thompson-fb-post" height="355" src="https://pajamasmed.hs.llnwd.net/e1/trending/user-content/51/files/2016/11/Stephanie-Clemons-Thompson-FB-post.jpg" width="400" /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, Thompson was embracing a terrorist who was trying to murder people on her campus. And yet, her blindered ideology had taught her that if the terrorist was black and the police officer was white, he had been murdered by white privilege. She expressed no sympathy for the victims of the terrorist action.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One does not understand why she felt that Artan’s actions might reflect badly on her or on the Ohio State community, but, as a general rule, if you do not want the actions of one individual to reflect on your community, you must denounce what he did. You should call for the shunning of anyone who sympathizes with terrorist actions. Or of any imam who tries to provoke terrorism in his mosque.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In the Times report we read this:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As Ohio State officials took stock of the attack and made plans for classes to resume on Tuesday, they said they were thankful the injuries were not more severe and were optimistic that students would come together even if investigators discovered a link to terrorism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“Our campus community is extremely tolerant,” Michael V. Drake, the university president, said in an interview. “The concept of branding a whole community for the act of a few leads to an intolerance that can make the world a more difficult place for all of us.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And it adds this, from the Council of American Islamic Relations:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“We as yet know nothing about the motivation of the attacker, but we do know of his Somali heritage, and that will be enough for some people to falsely link this tragic incident to the faith of Islam and to the Somali and Muslim communities,” said Roula Allouch, national board chairwoman of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. “We must not jump to conclusions. It is important to let the investigators do their jobs.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite these suggestions, when a terrorist act is committed, we who are targeted have no obligation to forgive and to forget. We have every right to think that an act committed in the name of Islam has something to do with Islam.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Muslims themselves must denounce terrorism and must report the incipient terrorists in their midst. If they are not willing to do so, they are affirming that something about their faith produces these horrors. When they blame Islamophobia they are shifting responsibility and showing that they have no sense of honor.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If they want to disassociate themselves from Islamist terrorism they should begin by denouncing Palestinian terrorism against Israelis. If they cannot do it, if they are too afraid to do it, then they should stop complaining about being judged. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For its part, Ohio State University, in the name of two administrative officials has chosen the path of what it calls tolerance. It has chosen not to feel any anger and not to denounce the cause in whose name Abdul Artan acted. In so doing it is making it appear that Islamophobia is the real problem. Which is what Artan believed. If Islamophobia is the problem that means: the failure of the infidels to submit to Islam. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">That was exactly the point that Artan was trying to make. And that was the lesson incipient terrorists will take from the reactions. They will see that terrorism works and that it causes Americans to soften their attitudes toward Islam. Seeing that their religion strikes fear in the hearts of infidels will propel them toward more acts of terrorism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, serif;">Would Abdul Artan have done it if he had believed that his actions would have discredited and disgraced his religion?</span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-9399326355964755752016-11-30T07:42:00.001-08:002016-11-30T07:42:14.300-08:00The End of the Anglo-American World Order<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In what will count as this weekend’s big think magazine article Bard College professor <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/magazine/the-end-of-the-anglo-american-order.html">Ian Buruma </a>bemoans the advent of Donald Trump and Nigel Farage. He sees them as an omen that presages the end of the Anglo-American world order.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Had he been slightly more astute he might have noted that eight years of President Barack Obama has seen America retreat from many of the values that made it great, powerful and it prosperous. Why blame Trump for something that has already happened?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Buruma argues that Barack Obama was trying to save America by producing a giant wave of equality. That goal was so important that Obama did not bother to concern himself with the production of wealth. Buruma does not seem to recognize that producing wealth and redistributing wealth are contradictory policies.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In what must surely count as one of the most misguided opinions offered by a serious thinker Buruma closes his article with a hope and a prayer that Western civilization, that is Judeo-Christian civilization will be saved by… you guessed it… Angela Merkel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">By pretending that all cultures are the same and that true liberal principles require you to submit to the kind of social chaos produced when unassimilable immigrants are allowed to overrun your nation Merkel has damaged her own country severely and has contributed mightily to the current rise of nationalism and populism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As for Barack Obama, if I may repeat points that I have made previously, our president has failed to unite the country, refused to exercise American influence around the world, submitted to the ayatollahs and was cowed by Vladmir Putin and Xi Jinping. Rather than engage in the struggle against radical Islam—struggle that would have united the nation against a common enemy—Obama divided the country by going to war against Islamophobia and other forms of what he considered racism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Purifying the American soul of sin was more important to him than asserting American greatness. If the Anglo-American world order is at an end, one primary reason is that Barack Obama put an end to it. He, and of course, those who voted for him and who still believe that he did a great job.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Obama thinks that America was founded on a racist past and thus that he cannot take pride in its greatest achievements… the ones that culminated in victory in World War II.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Buruma understands that the current world order derives from the last war in which America was victorious:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">When Trump and Farage stood on that stage together in Mississippi, they spoke as though they were patriots reclaiming their great countries from foreign interests. No doubt they regard Britain and the United States as exceptional nations. But their success is dismaying precisely because it goes against a particular idea of Anglo-American exceptionalism. Not the traditional self-image of certain American and British jingoists who like to think of the United States as the City on the Hill or Britain as the sceptered isle splendidly aloof from the wicked Continent, but another kind of Anglo-American exception: the one shaped by World War II. The defeat of Germany and Japan resulted in a grand alliance, led by the United States, in the West and Asia. Pax Americana, along with a unified Europe, would keep the democratic world safe. If Trump and Farage get their way, much of that dream will be in tatters.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Buruma notwithstanding, the dream is now in tatters. It is interesting to see him blame someone who has not served a day in office while ignoring the influence of the current president.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Buruma does not draw the obvious lesson from World War II, and from British inventions like the Industrial Revolution and free enterprise. We won the war because we practiced martial values, not because we led the world in free love and peace marches. And he ignores cultural habits like the British stiff upper lip, the British tendency to queue up, and the value of patriotism and loyalty.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Instead, Buruma argues that the Anglo-American world order was produced by a wistful dream for equality. Of course, Jefferson did have something to say about equality in the Declaration of Independence, but the armies and the industries that produced the Anglo-American order were based on liberty more than equality. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One recalls that, well before Jefferson stepped foot in France, one Jean-Jacques Rousseau produced a “Discourse on Inequality” that set the minds of idealists abuzz but that helped produce the bloodbath called the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The martial values that won World War II were dismissed by the baby boomer generation in favor of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Their children value transgendered restrooms, trigger warnings and legalized weed. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Even before Barack Obama, America had been declining. It had suffered a series of failed military incursions and lost wars. Obama upped the ante by refusing to fight at all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You can drool all you want about social justice but if your nation keeps losing wars, it will no longer set a standard that anyone will want to emulate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">About that Buruma has nothing to say.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In part, Buruma understands clearly the importance of capitalism:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anglo-American capitalism can be harsh in many ways, but because free markets are receptive to new talent and cheap labor, they have spawned the kind of societies, pragmatic and relatively open, where immigrants can thrive, the very kind that rulers of more closed, communitarian, autocratic societies tend to despise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">To his mind the Cold War as a battle between ideas. It was our dream of equality versus their despotism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Buruma argues:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The West, its freedoms protected by the United States, needed a plausible counternarrative to Soviet ideology. This included a promise of greater social and economic equality.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thus, Buruma claims that what made America great was the civil rights movement, culminating in the election of a president who had no real qualifications for the job. He ignores the fact that the election of Barack Obama defined the notion of qualification downwards. If Obama was so great and if he made America so great why have he and his political party been so roundly repudiated at the polls?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If Barack Obama set such a shining example why have more and more Americans lost faith in democracy? And, why have other countries around the world decided that liberal democracy is not for them?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you want to know where Barack Obama’s loyalty lies, consider the fact that not a single member of his administration represented America at the funeral of Margaret Thatcher. On the contrary, two White House officials will be attending the funeral of Fidel Castro. It’s not just that Obama is the master of the cheap shot; his sympathies lie with the oppressed not with the victors.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How much more do you need to understand?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Buruma’s words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">America’s prestige was greatly bolstered not just by the soldiers who helped liberate Europe but also by the men and women back home who fought to make their society more equal and their democracy more inclusive. By struggling against the injustices in their own country, figures like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or the Freedom Riders or indeed President Obama kept the hope of American exceptionalism alive. As did the youth culture of the 1960s.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He does not mention, even in passing, that Anglo-American principles and achievements are constantly attacked in the school system and the media. The American academy, such as it is, is chockablock with professors who believe that America is an organized criminal conspiracy that needs to be brought down. They teach their students to despise the martial values that won World War II and to disparage the free enterprise system that produced prosperity after the war. They oppose Anglo-American hegemony as an article of faith. About this Buruma has nothing to say.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And Buruma does not appreciate the fact that the assault on America, coupled with the assault on Western Civilization has come to us from the same fever swamps that produced European fascism, Nazism and Communism. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He does not see that Middle Europeans who could not defeat America or Britain on the battlefield or in the marketplace, were taking out their frustration on local exemplars of the values they abhorred. That is, on their own local Jewish population. Within Nazi Europe Jews became surrogates for the forces of Anglo-American culture and values. It is certainly not an accident that today’s social justice warriors, led by Jeremiah Wright’s protégé, a man supported by Louis Farrakhan, reserve a special hatred for the state of Israel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Buruma makes this point:<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Wilhelm II, kaiser of Germany until 1918, when his country was defeated in the First World War, which he had done his best to unleash, was such a figure. Half English himself, he called England a nation of shopkeepers and described it as “Juda-England,” a country corrupted by sinister alien elites, where money counted more than the virtues of blood and soil. In later decades, this kind of anti-Semitic rhetoric was more often aimed at the United States. The Nazis were convinced that Jewish capitalists ruled America, not just in Hollywood but in Washington and, naturally, New York. This notion is still commonly held, though less in Europe than in the Middle East and some parts of Asia. But talk about “citizens of nowhere,” sinister cosmopolitan elites and conspiratorial bankers fits precisely in the same tradition. A terrifying irony of contemporary Anglo-American populism is the common use of phrases that were traditionally used by enemies of the English-speaking countries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Note how brilliantly twisted Buruma is. Who declared himself a citizen of the world… in Germany, no less? It was Barack Obama, don’t you recall. The guardian class of elites-- idealists all-- has chosen to fight a culture war against the values that prevailed during World War II and the years that followed. These modern Platonists oppose the empirical culture of Great Britain. They have no use for science and they care less for American pragmatism. They do not judge ideas by whether they work in practice. And, let us be very clear, these same cultural elites, these citizens of the world have happily joined Fidel Castro and Jeremy Corbyn in waging war against Israel, the country that represents the values they despise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Why do they do so? They abhor the notion that some cultures are superior to others, and that a band of Jews could build a free and prosperous nation in a place where Arabs had only known failure.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For his part Buruma resents the fact that Britons and Americans have taken pride in their victories and their successes. He would prefer that they become guilt-ridden slugs, spending their time doing penance for their sins.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, he does not see pride as pride, but demeans and slanders it. <i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The self-flattering notion that the Western victors in World War II are special, braver and freer than any other people, that the United States is the greatest nation in the history of man, that Great Britain — the country that stood alone against Hitler — is superior to any European let alone non-European country has not only led to some ill-conceived wars but also helped to paper over the inequalities built into Anglo-American capitalism. The notion of natural superiority, of the sheer luck of being born an American or a Briton, gave a sense of entitlement to people who, in terms of education or prosperity, were stuck in the lower ranks of society.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As I said, Buruma closes his piece by declaring that the embattled and beleaguered Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, represents the true values of the West. In truth Merkel does represent the values of the guardian class, but she certainly does not represent the values that won two great wars. Could it be that she represents the values that lost two wars, that so totally resented Anglo-American hegemony that they turned their nation and the world into Hell:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The last hope of the West might be Germany, the country that Michael Howard fought against and that I hated as a child. Angela Merkel’s message to Trump on the day after his victory was a perfect expression of Western values that are still worth defending. She would welcome a close cooperation with the United States, she said, but only on the basis of “democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views.” Merkel spoke as the true heiress of the Atlantic Charter.</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Speaking of great ironies, the philosophers who have resented the Anglo-American values that prevailed over the great idealistic enterprises called Nazism and Communism want to hand leadership of the Atlantic alliance to Germany.&nbsp;</span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-1321281798285795572016-11-30T05:06:00.002-08:002016-11-30T05:06:52.301-08:00Is the EU Unraveling?<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Is the European Union unraveling? After Brexit many commentators predicted that the EU was on the road to obsolescence. A primary reason was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open the nation to a flood of Muslim refugees. Subjecting your nation to an alien invasion is not good politics.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">While Merkel has been trying to step back from her signature policy, the German people want to reclaim their national identity. For now it is not quite a majority, but who knows what will happen if the issue becomes a real referendum.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3985260/Nearly-half-Germans-want-follow-UK-hold-Brexit-style-referendum-EU-membership.html?ito=social-twitter_mailonline">The Daily Mail</a> reports on a recent survey:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Nearly half of Germans have indicated they want to follow Britain in holding a referendum on their EU membership.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A survey found 42 percent of citizens want a similar vote that led to Brexit, while two thirds of the population believe the European Union 'is heading in the wrong direction'.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It will be seen as a blow to German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been criticised for her open-door policy on immigration which saw one million migrants enter the country last year.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And also:<i><br /><br />Figures show 67 percent of Germans want the EU to change its political course and a massive 96 percent want the bloc to be 'more transparent and closer to the people', according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rt.com/news/368610-germans-eu-wrong-direction/" target="_blank"><b>RT</b></a>.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;</span></span></i><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Only 39 percent of citizens think country's deal with Europe is a positive thing and a quarter believe it could threaten their national identity with the majority of those asked considering themselves German and not European.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">Again, the problem is immigration:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Germany's migrant crisis is still considered the biggest modern challenge, according to&nbsp;<a href="https://www.rt.com/news/368610-germans-eu-wrong-direction/" target="_blank"><b>RT</b></a>.</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Seven in 10 respondents want to see the EU's external borders better protected, a fifth of Germans want to see them completely closed.&nbsp;&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">And finally:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a separate study, four out of ten Germans fear their country is being subverted by Islam, according to a new study into attitudes towards immigration and religion.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And 34.7 per cent say they feel like a stranger in their own country.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">New research has also revealed that 28 per cent of people say they can no longer express an opinion 'without getting into trouble'.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Interesting last point: too many refugees and with too much guilt have produced a witch hunt against dissidents, against Islamophobia. To the leftist mind the only problem with mass immigration is the bad attitude of the local population. So much for free expression.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></i></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-4988429881774229462016-11-29T07:10:00.000-08:002016-11-29T07:46:04.031-08:00Blog Appreciation Week Continues<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Being as this is a conservative blog, I make a special effort to respect tradition. Even my own invented traditions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Long time readers know that I have taken Cyber Monday—as in, today—as the time to kick off my annual fundraising campaign. It will last for the week, so you might see this same post repeated again and again as the week goes on. Brace yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">It might not seem like it, but it does take some considerable work to produce these posts every day. For those who are thinking about how they can express their appreciation for my efforts, I recommend making a donation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">If you click on the orange Donate button on the left side of this page, the kind folks at Paypal will help you to contribute as much as you would like.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">If you would rather not have to use Paypal, I gratefully accept checks sent to my address:&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 310 East 46<sup>th</sup>&nbsp;St. 24H<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; New York, NY&nbsp;&nbsp; 10017<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As it happens, today is called Giving Tuesday. Hint.&nbsp;</span><br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Thank you in advance.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-86894545993599708472016-11-29T06:25:00.000-08:002016-11-29T09:34:22.735-08:00Men and Women See Things Differently<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">This will come as a shock to the social construct crowd, but men and women do not see things the same way. In the most literal sense, men and women look at faces differently. It must have something to do with different wiring for different kinds of brains.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Luckily the social construct crowd does not believe in science anyway, so, don’t feel too badly for them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">In any event, I report the research from <a href="http://www.psypost.org/2016/11/eyes-women-men-really-see-things-differently-46148">PsyPost</a>:</span></span><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">&nbsp;</span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">Women and men look at faces and absorb visual information in different ways, which suggests there is a gender difference in understanding visual cues, according to a team of scientists that included psychologists from Queen Mary University of London (QMUL).<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">The researchers used an eye tracking device on almost 500 participants at the Science Museum over a five-week period to monitor and judge how much eye contact they felt comfortable with while looking at a face on a computer screen.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;">They found that women looked more at the left-hand side of faces and had a strong left eye bias, but that they also explored the face much more than men. The team observed that it was possible to tell the gender of the participant based on the scanning pattern of how they looked at the face with nearly 80 per cent accuracy. Given the very large sample size the researchers suggest this is not due to chance.</span></span></i><br /><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: &quot;georgia&quot; , &quot;times new roman&quot; , serif;"><br /></span></span></i><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[Addendum: Now, the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3983020/Men-Women-really-world-differently-Researchers-females-perceive-faces-left-bias.html">Daily Mail</a> has reported on the same study. It adds the following Darwinian explanation for the difference between male and female facial recognition:<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Many experts believe that the way women see faces goes back to early humans, as females spent their lives as gatherers – they had to recognize close at hand, static objects such as wild berries.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;">On the other hand, men had the job of hunting prey and keeping predators away, which did not require a detailed view.</span></i><span style="line-height: 115%;">]</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: &quot;Georgia&quot;,&quot;serif&quot;; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></i></div></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-89441837325010663612016-11-29T05:59:00.002-08:002016-11-29T05:59:46.247-08:00The Case of the Man-Whore<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Don’t you wish you knew what really went on in therapy sessions? Wouldn’t you want to know how therapists really treat their patients? Aren’t you just a wee bit curious to know what all of that advanced education, all those credentials produces in real life situations? Besides, the chances are good that insurance companies are paying for it. Think about that one.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Well, today, we get a hint from an unlikely place. From New York Magazine’s <a href="http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/11/the-divorced-broker-whose-therapist-encourages-promiscuity.html?mid=twitter_nymag">Sex Diaries</a>. Each week the magazine turns a column over to an everyday citizen who offers up an account of a week’s worth of debauchery. Because, it is mostly debauchery. People who debauch themselves are much more likely to write about it for a magazine, even anonymously. I will emphasize that these columns tend toward the obscene and the graphic. Consider yourself trigger warned.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anyway, this week we have the sex diary of a 38 year old real estate broker who is in therapy. With a woman, he notes. The man became depressed when his wife ran off with someone she met in acting class. He had been faithful to her for ten years and was seriously crestfallen when she rejected him. So he went on anti-depressants. With the help of his therapist, he developed a plan for dealing with his post-divorce state of mind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If one were examining the case one would want to know about whether or not, during the ten years of marriage, the unhappy couple had children or tried to have children or wanted to have children. Given that this is certainly a salient point—some might even say that it has something to do with sex— he (and apparently the therapist) ignores it entirely.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What does his therapist advise? In the man’s words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Monday therapy! My shrink is all about embracing bad behavior, i.e., sleeping around. She says being a man-whore is helping me transition into healthy, single living. About that: I slept with both my dates this weekend.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For those of you who imagine that therapists never tell their patients what to do, it’s time to get over it. I offered something of a critique of the notion that therapists never offer advice in my book, <i>The Last Psychoanalyst</i>. Therein I pointed out that, as far as Freud was concerned, the truth was that when Freud offered advice he simply offered very bad advice. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One assumes that some serious level of philosophical sophistication has taught this therapist to advise her patient to go out and embrace his essentially male badness. One suspects that said therapist was taking cues from someone like Slavoj Zizek. If you want to know what Zizekianism looks like in practice, here it is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Naturally, this leads me to be slightly moralistic and even judgmental. Are we to assume that the patient really wants to be a man-whore and that this wish exists in the depths of his Freudian unconscious? Of course, since the broker is not being paid for sex, the term is something of a misnomer, trotted out by a therapist who is trying to show how cool and how stupid she is.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And, pray tell, why is being a man-whore a natural prelude to healthy single living. Did you notice the non-sequitur in this piece of bad advice?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And, ask yourself this: what about the women who are involved in this man’s acting out what is fairly obviously, to anyone who knows how to think, a revenge fantasy. He was faithful during his marriage. His wife left him. Ergo, he can express all of his negative feelings toward his wife by taking advantage of any multiple other women. Since he is not, strictly speaking, involved with any of them, he cannot say that he is cheating. Do any of these women take it all as casually as he does? We do not know. He does not really see any of them as human beings anyway so he never asks the question.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Anyway, the female therapist, with her superior knowledge of female psychology, does not seem to consider that the women who are becoming notches on this man’s bedposts are perhaps not being treated very well. Why would a female therapist advise a man to mistreat women? Does she think that developing this habit will make him better at monogamy? If so she is dumber than I thought.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Who but a woman would imagine that this is the way for a man to be more of a man?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As for the risk of contracting an STD, our real estate broker has that under control. He explains:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I tell my partner (we do apartment sales together) that one of the women from the weekend mentioned she had an STD. It was totally taken care of and I was at no risk of catching it, especially with a condom (which I ALWAYS use). My buddy and I agree an STD handled “with class” is not a deal-breaker. We decide that most people probably have STDs and probably lie about it, which is far grosser. I wonder if HE has an STD. Speaking of, I should get a physical.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As it happens, and as any physician can tell you, a condom is not a foolproof, 100% sure barrier against STDs. I will not explain it in graphic detail, but this man is clearly living an illusion. Is his therapist a physician? Has she explained this to him? We do not know.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In a world where everyone is having sex, as our realtor mentions, the chances for contracting an STD multiply. One notes that he lives in the bubble called Brooklyn.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Strangely, this man-whore is doing what he is doing because it was prescribed by his therapist, not necessarily because it is what he wants out of his life. He finds the exercise tedious, but he thinks it is therapeutic. He has confidence that it will lead him to a relationship. With the One…. God help us!<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He writes:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Catching up on all the online dating, texting, post-sex follow-ups, etc. It’s tiring. I’d trade it all in for a real relationship, but I know that will come in time. I would not trade it in to be back with my ex-wife. I really fucking hate her. We don’t speak or see each other at all.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So we get to see what happens between our man-whore and a woman he names Eva. Again note the influence of his therapist—who apparently has bewitched him:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Eva is a freelance food writer. She claims to be bisexual, but she also said she’s never had sex with a woman. Oh, Brooklyn. I remember her saying she was turned off by my line of work, which hurt my feelings. My therapist suggested bringing it up at lunch.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I ask her what she meant by real estate being a turnoff, and she tells me her mom did real estate and that it seems like a shady business. My reply: “Only as shady as you make it. I’m not shady. I never tell lies.” (That is the truth, by the way.)<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I go on to tell her that it was kind of a rude thing to say, but that I’m past it. She halfheartedly apologizes, jokingly saying something like, “Oh, get over it!” I think I can get over it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Notice that he has gotten in touch with his hurt feelings. We all feel very badly for his hurt feelings. So he ends up telling Eva that she was rude. This means that he has been turned into something of a whiner. Another point for therapy. Eva, who apparently does not have a dippy therapist, tells him to get over it, thus, to be a man.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, once the couple engages in some kind of sexual activity, our man-whore still feels hurt by the fact that she dismissed his feelings. Yikes. It shows you where his mind is. And it is not with Eva.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After another casual encounter with Eva, the hung over man-whore has an epiphany:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Hangovers make me depressed. I don’t really like being single. Does anybody? (Seriously, does anybody?) Again, I don’t think Eva is the one. My gut says nah. But who is? I’ll keep looking. She’s out there somewhere.&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, one might ask whether sleeping around with many different women is the best way to find a suitable mate. One suspects that it is not. And yet, for allowing himself to be led around by his therapist, he is not getting any closer to finding a good wife. And he is certainly not getting any closer to knowing how to function in a relationship.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One notes, if one dares to read the text, that he is especially happy to be in the company of his brother’s family. Clearly that is what he is looking for, not to perfect the art of the man-whore.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">He writes, in passing:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Taking my nephews to swim class at the Y. I love them so much. Can’t wait to have kids of my own. Hoping I meet the one soon.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Again, we do not know why he did not have children during his ten year marriage. The question will remain in limbo, because it did not seem to interest his therapist.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-24695734033362014172016-11-28T07:09:00.001-08:002016-11-28T07:09:43.282-08:00Blog Appreciation Week<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Being as this is a conservative blog, I make a special effort to respect tradition. Even my own invented traditions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Long time readers know that I have taken Cyber Monday—as in, today—as the time to kick off my annual fundraising campaign. It will last for the week, so you might see this same post repeated again and again as the week goes on. Brace yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It might not seem like it, but it does take some considerable work to produce these posts every day. For those who are thinking about how they can express their appreciation for my efforts, I recommend making a donation.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you click on the orange Donate button on the left side of this page, the kind folks at Paypal will help you to contribute as much as you would like.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you would rather not have to use Paypal, I gratefully accept checks sent to my address: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 310 East 46<sup>th</sup> St. 24H<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; New York, NY&nbsp;&nbsp; 10017<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Thank you in advance.</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-46153854028066973122016-11-28T06:50:00.000-08:002016-11-28T06:50:57.329-08:00The Mind of the American College Student<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Trust me. I do not revel in the opportunity to cast aspersions on America’s youth. I do not thrill to the prospect of writing churlish commentaries about the snowflake generation, or even about the millennial generation. After all, America’s children are its future, and we all prefer to remain optimistic about America’s future. The happiness merchants in the world of cognitive psychology have insisted that we do so.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lately, as students take to their crying towels and tootsie-rolls to whine about the most recent presidential election, it has become harder and harder to see a bright side to this open-air therapy. But, it is not remarkable that these students, for having been raised in a therapy culture, think first of their feelings and last, if at all, about what is happening in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Their education has cut them off from their civilizational roots and their national pride so they are suffering from mass anomie… if such is possible.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Naturally, some commenters have proposed, reasonably, that my view of the younger generation is unduly harsh. They cannot possibly be as bad as they appear to my jaded vision. It’s easy for the older generation to take pot shots at the younger generation. Even if one’s motives are pure—as mine certainly are—it all looks utterly and unreasonably judgmental. We would not want that.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Besides, since I do not teach at a university I do not have very much direct contact with the snowflake generation. A fair point, indeed. But one that does not apply to Notre Dame Professor <a href="http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2016/02/how-a-generation-lost-its-common-culture/">Patrick Deneen</a>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Deneen has taught at Georgetown and Princeton. Thus, he has earned the right to offer some opinions about his students. In an article that appeared in Minding the Campus (via <a href="http://americandigest.org/">American Digest</a>) early this year Deneen offered a view that is based in real experience. Sorry to have to say it, but his opinion of today’s college students is bleaker than mine. It turns out that I have been offering a rosy scenario about today’s youth. Who would have guessed?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Don’t believe me? Try this, from Deneen:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their brains are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of … a civilization that has forgotten nearly everything about itself, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference to its own culture.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In other circles it’s called cosmopolitanism, or citizen-of-the-worldism. It seeks to cut students off from their culture roots, the better to make them into fully human asocial beings.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As Deneen sees it, the educational system and our culture at large have done it on purpose:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts — whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about — have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And also:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, history-less free agents, and educational goals composed of content-free processes and unexamined buzz-words like “critical thinking,” “diversity,” “ways of knowing,” “social justice,” and “cultural competence.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As I have occasionally mentioned, if you do not identify yourself as a member of a group, but only as a member of the species, you need not practice the kinds of good behavior that will sustain and maintain your membership. Since you do not need to do anything to continue to be a member of the human species and since nothing you can do will cause you to be any more or less human, cutting people off from community and their common culture makes them amoral.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Deneen explains:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In such a world, possessing a culture, a history, an inheritance, a commitment to a place and particular people, specific forms of gratitude and indebtedness (rather than a generalized and deracinated commitment to “social justice”), a strong set of ethical and moral norms that assert definite limits to what one ought and ought not to do (aside from being “judgmental”) are hindrances and handicaps.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It began with multiculturalism and ended with the idealization of diversity:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Efforts first to foster appreciation for “multi-culturalism” signaled a dedication to eviscerate any particular cultural inheritance, while the current fad of “diversity” signals thoroughgoing commitment to de-cultured and relentless homogenization.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You end up not belonging to anything. You have no real interest in connecting to your culture, to the achievements of your forebears. Thus, you are lost and adrift… ignorant and self-absorbed. Your values, such as they will be, are valueless.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In Deneen’s words:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Ancient philosophy and practice praised as an excellent form of government a&nbsp;res publica&nbsp;– a devotion to public things, things we share together. We have instead created the world’s first&nbsp;Res Idiotica&nbsp;– from the Greek word&nbsp;idiotes, meaning “private individual.” Our education system produces solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to a public, a common culture, a shared history. They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">How are we going to get out of this predicament? Deneen is slightly less optimistic than I am, but his point deserves consideration. People will not wake up to the cost of cultural collapse until everything else collapses all around them.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">But even on those better days, I can’t help but hold the hopeful thought that the world they have inherited – a world without inheritance, without past, future, or deepest cares – is about to come tumbling down, and that this collapse would be the true beginning of a real education.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Have a nice day!</span></span></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-4110242912261893192016-11-28T05:16:00.003-08:002016-11-28T05:16:42.509-08:00Angela Merkel's About Face<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Guess who said this?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It can not be that all the young people from Afghanistan come to Germany.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If you guessed beleaguered German Chancellor Angela Merkel you would be right. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now that Merkel wants to run for a fourth term as German Chancellor she is seeing more clearly. Her open-arms immigration policy has failed. It caused her political party to decline. Indirectly, it caused Great Britain to exit the European Union. As of yesterday, it looks like France’s next president will be an anti-immigrant center rightist, Francois Fillon. And, of course, the anti-immigrant candidate in the United States won the presidential election over the candidate who wanted to govern like Angela Merkel.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It took some time, but Merkel has finally come to her senses.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><a href="http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/736818/Migrant-crisis-Angela-Merkel-deport-100-000-refugees-failed-asylum-seekers-Germany">The London Express</a> has the story:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The beleaguered Chancellor said authorities would significantly step up the rate of forced returns as she battles to arrest an alarming slump in her popularity which has fuelled a surge in support for the far-right.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Mrs Merkel, whose decision to roll out the red carpet to migrants from across Africa and the Middle East spectacularly backfired, has taken an increasingly tough tone on immigration in recent months.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And in her toughest rhetoric yet the German leader told MPs from her party this week: ”The most important thing in the coming months is repatriation, repatriation and once more, repatriation.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The stance marks an astonishing U-turn from the once pro-refugee Chancellor, who has been widely pilloried by critics at home and abroad for her decision to throw open Germany’s borders to millions of migrants.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The article continues:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Speaking at a conference of conservative MPs in Neumünster yesterday evening the Chancellor revealed that she expects 100,000 migrants to leave Germany this year, of which a third will be forcibly removed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And employing a tough new form of rhetoric, she warned local regions to deport all migrants whose asylum applications are rejected, using force if necessary.</span></span></i></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-64265910773601610962016-11-28T05:03:00.000-08:002016-11-28T05:03:34.135-08:00Why Exercise?<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Consider this a public service. <a href="http://time.com/4475628/the-new-science-of-exercise/">Time Magazine</a> (via <a href="http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/29060-The-New-Science-of-Exercise.html">Maggie’sFarm</a>) recently offered a long article on the benefits of exercise. You knew all about it already, I am sure, but there’s no harm in looking at some of the most recent research. Whatever it takes to get you off the couch….<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A couple of salient passages from Time:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Scientists don’t know exactly why exercise changes the structure and function of the brain for the better, but it’s an area of active research. So far, they’ve found that exercise improves blood flow to the brain, feeding the growth of new blood vessels and even new brain cells, courtesy of the protein BDNF, short for brain-derived neurotrophic factor. BDNF triggers the growth of new neurons and helps repair and protect brain cells from degeneration. “I always tell people that exercise is regenerative medicine–restoring and repairing and basically fixing things that are broken,” Bamman says.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Repairs like this throughout the body may be the reason exercise has been shown to extend life span by as much as five years. A small new study suggests that moderate-intensity exercise may slow down the aging of cells. As humans get older and their cells divide over and over again, their telomeres–the protective caps on the end of chromosomes–get shorter. To see how exercise affects telomeres, researchers took a muscle biopsy and blood samples from 10 healthy people before and after a 45-minute ride on a stationary bicycle. They found that exercise increased levels of a molecule that protects telomeres, ultimately slowing how quickly they shorten over time. Exercise, then, appears to slow aging at the cellular level.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And also, reflecting advice that I like to give to everyone:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Dr. Robert Sallis, a family physician who runs a sports-medicine fellowship at Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center in California, has prescribed exercise to his patients since the early 1990s in hopes of doling out less medication. “It really worked amazingly, particularly in my very sickest patients,” he says. “If I could get them to do it on a regular basis–even just walking, anything that got their heart rate up a bit–I would see dramatic improvements in their chronic disease, not to mention all of these other things like depression, anxiety, mood and energy levels.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Older people, too, can benefit from strenuous exercise. Until now, all the recommendations for increasing bone density have included low-repetition, high-weight types of training, says Jinger Gottschall, associate professor of kinesiology at Penn State University. “But this just isn’t feasible for a lot of people. You can’t picture your grandma going in and doing that.” Luckily for Grandma, Gottschall’s team found that lifting lighter weights for more reps improves bone density in key parts of the body, making it a good alternative to heavy lifting.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It’s becoming evident that nearly everyone–young, old, pregnant, ill–benefits from exercise.</span></span></i></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8078379512095504946.post-36226392183527832052016-11-27T07:53:00.001-08:002016-11-27T07:53:56.363-08:00When Orange Is Not the New Black<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">It doesn’t happen very often that I find redeeming social value in a column by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/opinion/sunday/mothers-in-prison.html?_r=0">Nicholas Kristof</a>, but today is one of those days.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Recently, Kristof travelled to Oklahoma to research the mass incarceration of females. Of course, he begins by inveighing against all mass incarceration, but since everyone knows that young males commit far more crimes than do young females, we can easily defend the mass incarceration of males in terms of the concomitant reduction in crime. With female prisoners, the same is probably not the case.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">If we decide to release more male criminals from prison we are very likely to see an increase in the crime rate. If we decide to release more female criminals from prison the chances are good that we will not. Besides, if we do the latter, more children will have mothers present in the home.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Of course, a television series called <i>Orange is the New Black </i>has glamorized and even eroticized life in a woman’s prison<i>. </i>The show makes prison life seem cool and hot, though with an occasional instance of violence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Inexplicably, Kristof does not mention the television show. But, he also does not mention the fact that his argument rests on a yawning division of the sexes. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Despite what the propagandists would have you believe, men and women are not the same. In part, at least, America has gone down the road toward the mass incarceration of females because certain ideologues have insisted that men and women receive equal treatment in all matters, great and small, good and bad.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">America leads most of the world in incarcerating females because contemporary feminism insists on equality.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Kristof describes the scene, in which orange is not quite as fashionable as the television show makes it appear:<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The women’s wing of the jail here exhales sadness. The inmates, wearing identical orange uniforms, ache as they undergo withdrawal from drugs, as they eye one another suspiciously, and as they while away the days stripped of freedom, dignity, privacy and, most painful of all, their children.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Apparently, our mania with equality has caused us to ignore the fact that mothers and fathers are not interchangeable. And this has been costly:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">The United States has recently come to its senses and begun dialing back on the number of male prisoners. But we have continued to increase the number of women behind bars; two-thirds of women in state prisons are there for nonviolent offenses. America now incarcerates eight times as many women as in 1980, and only Thailand seems to imprison women at a higher rate.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As for the difference between the sexes, Kristof renders it here:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I wouldn’t argue that mass female incarceration is worse than mass male incarceration — they’re both counterproductive — but the imprisonment of women has heartbreaking collateral damage, because women are disproportionately likely to be primary caregivers, and 60 percent of American women in state prisons have children under 18.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Then there is the question of responsibility. How many women criminals were doing it to please a man or were doing it because they were accompanying a man? And how many of them suffered sexual abuse or were addicted to licit and illicit substances:<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">In fact, the women should evoke sympathy; even more than male prisoners, they have been through the wringer.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A quarter of women in state prisons reported having been sexually abused as children, one 1999 Justice Department study found. A different study found that 43 percent of women in jails that were examined had serious mental health problems, and 82 percent had drug or alcohol problems.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Take the example of a woman named Rabbit:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Like many female felons, Rabbit seems to have gotten in trouble because of a boyfriend who manipulated her into committing crimes.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“He always put me in the position of doing the dirty work,” Rabbit said, speaking of a boyfriend who used to choke and beat her when he wasn’t coercing her to commit crimes. She says they committed robberies and other offenses, sometimes she at his behest; he ended up with a sentence of four years probation and she faced a possible sentence of 26 years in prison.<o:p></o:p></span></span></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You’ve come a long way, baby! Our society’s failure to distinguish between men and women, our obsession with thinking that women are just as strong and just as prone to criminality as men has produced this problem. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You might think that these women deserve what they got and that they are responsible adults. Yet, while a young male criminal is more likely to reoffend and to endanger society, I seriously doubt that the same danger would be present if we got over the tendency to incarcerate women <i>en masse.<o:p></o:p></i></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Stuart Schneidermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12784043736879991769noreply@blogger.com7